When revdep-rebuild displays error messages (eg. unrecongnized parameter), it displays it at the end of the output, below the help output. This is counter to common practice and makes the error message hard to find. I believe that the usability would be improved if the error message was displayed before the help output. It might also be an idea not to display the entire usage output automatically for error messages at all. In my opinion, this information is easy enough to find already and "hides" the error message. Perhaps add a message along the lines of "see 'revdep-rebuild -h' for full usage information" to error messages instead. Current output: $ revdep-rebuild -a Usage: revdep-rebuild [OPTIONS] [--] [EMERGE_OPTIONS] Broken reverse dependency rebuilder. -C, --nocolor Turn off colored output -d, --debug Print way too much information (uses bash's set -xv) -e, --exact Emerge based on exact package version -h, --help Print this usage -i, --ignore Ignore temporary files from previous runs -k, --keep-temp Do not delete temporary files on exit -L, --library NAME Emerge existing packages that use the library with NAME --library=NAME NAME can be a full path to the library or a basic regular expression (man grep) -l, --no-ld-path Do not set LD_LIBRARY_PATH -o, --no-order Do not check the build order (Saves time, but may cause breakage.) -p, --pretend Do a trial run without actually emerging anything (also passed to emerge command) -P, --no-progress Turn off the progress meter -q, --quiet Be less verbose (also passed to emerge command) -v, --verbose Be more verbose (also passed to emerge command) -u, --no-util UTIL Do not use features provided by UTIL --no-util=UTIL UTIL can be one of portage-utils or pkgcore or it can be a *quoted* space-delimited list. Calls emerge, options after -- are ignored by revdep-rebuild and passed directly to emerge. Report bugs to <http://bugs.gentoo.org> Encountered unrecognized option -a. revdep-rebuild no longer automatically passes unrecognized options to portage. Separate emerge-only options from revdep-rebuild options with the -- flag. Expected output: $ revdep-rebuild -a Encountered unrecognized option -a. revdep-rebuild no longer automatically passes unrecognized options to portage. Separate emerge-only options from revdep-rebuild options with the -- flag. Usage: revdep-rebuild [OPTIONS] [--] [EMERGE_OPTIONS] Broken reverse dependency rebuilder. -C, --nocolor Turn off colored output -d, --debug Print way too much information (uses bash's set -xv) -e, --exact Emerge based on exact package version -h, --help Print this usage -i, --ignore Ignore temporary files from previous runs -k, --keep-temp Do not delete temporary files on exit -L, --library NAME Emerge existing packages that use the library with NAME --library=NAME NAME can be a full path to the library or a basic regular expression (man grep) -l, --no-ld-path Do not set LD_LIBRARY_PATH -o, --no-order Do not check the build order (Saves time, but may cause breakage.) -p, --pretend Do a trial run without actually emerging anything (also passed to emerge command) -P, --no-progress Turn off the progress meter -q, --quiet Be less verbose (also passed to emerge command) -v, --verbose Be more verbose (also passed to emerge command) -u, --no-util UTIL Do not use features provided by UTIL --no-util=UTIL UTIL can be one of portage-utils or pkgcore or it can be a *quoted* space-delimited list. Calls emerge, options after -- are ignored by revdep-rebuild and passed directly to emerge. Report bugs to <http://bugs.gentoo.org>
Created attachment 148771 [details, diff] revdep-rebuild_unrecopts.patch OK, I'm down with that. How's this patch against r485, too verbose?
$ svn commit -m "Change error message to be clearer when unknown option is passed. (Bug #214370)" Sending revdep-rebuild/revdep-rebuild Transmitting file data . Committed revision 487.
Released in gentoolkit-0.2.4_rc4
