[RFC] Concise vs comprehensive help - do we need both?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Ian Clatworthy writes:

 > BTW, I meant "bzr xxx -?" where xxx is any command [not just "help"].

OK.

 > > Why not "bzr help -+"?<duck />  Seriously, the fact that you see a
 > > need for a very terse and unintelligible option shows that this should
 > > be the default behavior.
 > 
 > Now that's being a little harsh, isn't it?

Well, maybe, although not in the context of the post you wrote (rather
than as amended).

 > I'd be just as happy not adding -? and making -h be concise help while
 > "bzr help xxx" gave the full story. Would that be better?

It might be.  However, I lean toward "bzr help" as the OOWDTI.  "bzr
help -v" would give the more comprehensive version.

I'm not particularly firm on this, though.  I think John's idea of
breaking out log formats as a separate topic is far more important.

BTW:

steve ~ [17:23]% bzr -?
zsh: no matches found: -?
steve ~ [17:26]% touch ./-a
steve ~ [17:26]% bzr -?    
bzr: ERROR: unknown command "-a"
steve ~ [17:26]% 

Oops.  Yeah, it works most of the time, but it really is ambiguous.
(And I do occasionally end up with file names that match the glob "-?"
because of some command line typo where what I intended as an option
got interpreted as a file name.  Highly unlikely, but ....)