getfacl help/version patch

[Joshua Daniel Franklin]

--- Corinna Vinschen <cygwin-patches@cygwin.com> wrote:
> On Tue, May 21, 2002 at 05:23:22PM -0500, Joshua Daniel Franklin wrote:
> > > On Mon, May 20, 2002 at 05:33:01PM -0500, Joshua Daniel Franklin wrote:
> > > > Here is a patch to getfacl that adds longopts for all options,
> > > > standardizes the usage output, and adds the GNU standard --version
> option.
> > >
> What I don't get is
> the reasoning for introducing the --examples option.  From my point
> of view that output should still be a part of --help.  
> 
> Corinna

OK, here is a patch that does as you suggested. I don't like all the 
information being part of usage for several reasons:
1. It is not 'standard' behavior. I couldn't find any other GNU or 
   other utilities that gave so much info on 'foo --help' (maybe 'less',
   but it just uses itself to display the help anyway). Some GNU stuff
   has mulitple pages of output but that's because there are so many
   options ('ls'). 
2. The information is pretty obvious from just the output, at least to
   someone who's familiar with UNIX. What I need the --help for is if I
   forget, for example if you get UID numbers with -n or -u. I find it 
   frustrating that to actually get the simple usage info I need I have to
   do 'getfacl --help | head' or 'getfacl --nosuchoption' However, I also
   think that having helpful explanations in the binary could be useful,
   so I came up with --examples
3. The extra information is difficult to process for the autogenerated
   man pages I make. There is a perl function that takes the output and
   creates the "OPTIONS" section. There is no page for getfacl yet, but
   I plan on making one after I finish adding --help,--version to all the
   utils. See 'man strace' to see what I mean. It'd be easier if it was 
   standard usage output. This is of course entirely my own problem that
   doesn't effect anyone else, but I thought it's worth a try to 'fix' it.

Anyway, you should now have working patches that either include the extra
information or not. I am fine and happy with either though of course I prefer
the one without. 

Have a nice day!

Joshua Daniel Franklin

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