C de-Avillez wrote: > On Thu, 2009-09-17 at 11:59 -0700, Micah Cowan wrote: >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >> Hash: SHA1 >> >> C de-Avillez wrote: >> > So. Would it be an acceptable idea to add, to the '--help', a warning >> > that this is *not* the full documentation? >> > >> > Say, like: >> > >> > "This is an abridged documentation. The full documentation for blahblah >> > is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If the info and date programs are >> > properly installed at your site, the command >> > >> > info coreutils 'blahblah invocation' >> > >> > should give you access to the complete manual." >> >> Is there anyone who's unaware that --help doesn't provide complete >> documentation? > > I would not expect anyone to *not* know that help output is abridged. > But I would rather have them go straight into 'info' than wasting time > on 'man', only to be redirected to 'info'. > > Usually one looks at the '--help' output first. If we redirect on 'man', > why not there?
I'm tempted to say add a one-liner, but there are already *four* lines at the end of even the smallest --help output message, e.g., $ sync --help Usage: sync [OPTION] Force changed blocks to disk, update the super block. --help display this help and exit --version output version information and exit Report sync bugs to bug-coreutils@gnu.org GNU coreutils home page: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/> General help using GNU software: <http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/> Report sync translation bugs to <http://translationproject.org/team/> I guess you'd like to see this added: For complete documentation, run "info coreutils 'sync invocation'" Maybe. Though I'm tempted to remove the "Report ... translation bugs..." line when using the C (or maybe all of en_*, too) locale. Other opinions?