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parse-options: add support for parsing subcommands
Several Git commands have subcommands to implement mutually exclusive
"operation modes", and they usually parse their subcommand argument
with a bunch of if-else if statements.
Teach parse-options to handle subcommands as well, which will result
in shorter and simpler code with consistent error handling and error
messages on unknown or missing subcommand, and it will also make
possible for our Bash completion script to handle subcommands
programmatically.
The approach is guided by the following observations:
- Most subcommands [1] are implemented in dedicated functions, and
most of those functions [2] either have a signature matching the
'int cmd_foo(int argc, const char **argc, const char *prefix)'
signature of builtin commands or can be trivially converted to
that signature, because they miss only that last prefix parameter
or have no parameters at all.
- Subcommand arguments only have long form, and they have no double
dash prefix, no negated form, and no description, and they don't
take any arguments, and can't be abbreviated.
- There must be exactly one subcommand among the arguments, or zero
if the command has a default operation mode.
- All arguments following the subcommand are considered to be
arguments of the subcommand, and, conversely, arguments meant for
the subcommand may not preceed the subcommand.
So in the end subcommand declaration and parsing would look something
like this:
parse_opt_subcommand_fn *fn = NULL;
struct option builtin_commit_graph_options[] = {
OPT_STRING(0, "object-dir", &opts.obj_dir, N_("dir"),
N_("the object directory to store the graph")),
OPT_SUBCOMMAND("verify", &fn, graph_verify),
OPT_SUBCOMMAND("write", &fn, graph_write),
OPT_END(),
};
argc = parse_options(argc, argv, prefix, options,
builtin_commit_graph_usage, 0);
return fn(argc, argv, prefix);
Here each OPT_SUBCOMMAND specifies the name of the subcommand and the
function implementing it, and the address of the same 'fn' subcommand
function pointer. parse_options() then processes the arguments until
it finds the first argument matching one of the subcommands, sets 'fn'
to the function associated with that subcommand, and returns, leaving
the rest of the arguments unprocessed. If none of the listed
subcommands is found among the arguments, parse_options() will show
usage and abort.
If a command has a default operation mode, 'fn' should be initialized
to the function implementing that mode, and parse_options() should be
invoked with the PARSE_OPT_SUBCOMMAND_OPTIONAL flag. In this case
parse_options() won't error out when not finding any subcommands, but
will return leaving 'fn' unchanged. Note that if that default
operation mode has any --options, then the PARSE_OPT_KEEP_UNKNOWN_OPT
flag is necessary as well (otherwise parse_options() would error out
upon seeing the unknown option meant to the default operation mode).
Some thoughts about the implementation:
- The same pointer to 'fn' must be specified as 'value' for each
OPT_SUBCOMMAND, because there can be only one set of mutually
exclusive subcommands; parse_options() will BUG() otherwise.
There are other ways to tell parse_options() where to put the
function associated with the subcommand given on the command line,
but I didn't like them:
- Change parse_options()'s signature by adding a pointer to
subcommand function to be set to the function associated with
the given subcommand, affecting all callsites, even those that
don't have subcommands.
- Introduce a specific parse_options_and_subcommand() variant
with that extra funcion parameter.
- I decided against automatically calling the subcommand function
from within parse_options(), because:
- There are commands that have to perform additional actions
after option parsing but before calling the function
implementing the specified subcommand.
- The return code of the subcommand is usually the return code
of the git command, but preserving the return code of the
automatically called subcommand function would have made the
API awkward.
- Also add a OPT_SUBCOMMAND_F() variant to allow specifying an
option flag: we have two subcommands that are purposefully
excluded from completion ('git remote rm' and 'git stash save'),
so they'll have to be specified with the PARSE_OPT_NOCOMPLETE
flag.
- Some of the 'parse_opt_flags' don't make sense with subcommands,
and using them is probably just an oversight or misunderstanding.
Therefore parse_options() will BUG() when invoked with any of the
following flags while the options array contains at least one
OPT_SUBCOMMAND:
- PARSE_OPT_KEEP_DASHDASH: parse_options() stops parsing
arguments when encountering a "--" argument, so it doesn't
make sense to expect and keep one before a subcommand, because
it would prevent the parsing of the subcommand.
However, this flag is allowed in combination with the
PARSE_OPT_SUBCOMMAND_OPTIONAL flag, because the double dash
might be meaningful for the command's default operation mode,
e.g. to disambiguate refs and pathspecs.
- PARSE_OPT_STOP_AT_NON_OPTION: As its name suggests, this flag
tells parse_options() to stop as soon as it encouners a
non-option argument, but subcommands are by definition not
options... so how could they be parsed, then?!
- PARSE_OPT_KEEP_UNKNOWN: This flag can be used to collect any
unknown --options and then pass them to a different command or
subsystem. Surely if a command has subcommands, then this
functionality should rather be delegated to one of those
subcommands, and not performed by the command itself.
However, this flag is allowed in combination with the
PARSE_OPT_SUBCOMMAND_OPTIONAL flag, making possible to pass
--options to the default operation mode.
- If the command with subcommands has a default operation mode, then
all arguments to the command must preceed the arguments of the
subcommand.
AFAICT we don't have any commands where this makes a difference,
because in those commands either only the command accepts any
arguments ('notes' and 'remote'), or only the default subcommand
('reflog' and 'stash'), but never both.
- The 'argv' array passed to subcommand functions currently starts
with the name of the subcommand. Keep this behavior. AFAICT no
subcommand functions depend on the actual content of 'argv[0]',
but the parse_options() call handling their options expects that
the options start at argv[1].
- To support handling subcommands programmatically in our Bash
completion script, 'git cmd --git-completion-helper' will now list
both subcommands and regular --options, if any. This means that
the completion script will have to separate subcommands (i.e.
words without a double dash prefix) from --options on its own, but
that's rather easy to do, and it's not much work either, because
the number of subcommands a command might have is rather low, and
those commands accept only a single --option or none at all. An
alternative would be to introduce a separate option that lists
only subcommands, but then the completion script would need not
one but two git invocations and command substitutions for commands
with subcommands.
Note that this change doesn't affect the behavior of our Bash
completion script, because when completing the --option of a
command with subcommands, e.g. for 'git notes --<TAB>', then all
subcommands will be filtered out anyway, as none of them will
match the word to be completed starting with that double dash
prefix.
[1] Except 'git rerere', because many of its subcommands are
implemented in the bodies of the if-else if statements parsing the
command's subcommand argument.
[2] Except 'credential', 'credential-store' and 'fsmonitor--daemon',
because some of the functions implementing their subcommands take
special parameters.
Signed-off-by: SZEDER Gábor <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <[email protected]>
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