Ok, changing the help-pages to be able to iterate over options is indeed a lot of work, I guess.
I made a simple Bash-script to do 'sort of' what I meant, in a very limited way, but I find it quite useful already. Script pasted below and available at http://home.mircad.nl/md/fossil_apropos_search.html . Tested on Linux and NetBSD (with an existing /usr/bin/bash). ---8<---8<---8<--- #!/usr/bin/bash # WHAT IS THIS? # # This script performs a search through Fossil command-options. # # CAVEAT # # The method to filter out options from the other text is feeble - # only lines from help-pages beginning with whitespace are # considered. This works reasonably well. Obviously, this tool is # meant as a supplement to 'fossil help' only. # # SYNTAX # # fapropos <needle> [<whence>] # # <needle>: the string to search for # # <whence> an optional command-set specifier, e.g. "-t" for # test-commands, or "-w" for WWW-commands. If not # given, defaults to "-a" ("all commands"). F=fossil needle=$1 shift [ -n "$needle" ] || { echo "Use a search-string"; exit; } whence=$* [ -n "$whence" ] || whence="-a" cmds=$( $F help $whence | xargs echo ) for c in $cmds; do opts=$( $F help $c | grep '^ ' | grep -- "$needle" ) if [ -n "$opts" ]; then echo $c: echo "$opts" | sed 's/^ */ /' echo fi done ---8<---8<---8<--- Michai On 21 July 2015 at 11:06, Michai Ramakers <m.ramak...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello, > > I was searching for a way to close a leaf from the command-line, and > didn't find it. (The new 'check-in-edit' branch can do this using > 'amend --close'.) > > Is there a way using legacy commands? > > Also, I notice there are generally questions on this list of the form > 'where is command XYZ to do PQR', just like this very post. As the set > of command-line commands and options grows, it becomes more difficult > to find how to do something; some functionality exists as a separate > command, some other exists as option to a command. (I had expected the > 'branch' command to have a 'close' subcommand, for instance.) > > Is it an idea to have an 'apropos(1)'-like subcommand or option to the > 'help' command? For those that don't know, the 'apropos' command on > *nix does a keyword search accross all manual pages - or perhaps > help-pages, in case of fossil. > > In my case, I knew I needed/wanted something that CLOSEs something, so > I would have keyword-searched for 'close'. > > I'm happy with the 'amend' command btw. And I guess that as I become > more familiar with fossil's internals or philosophy, it becomes easier > to guess the command that provides a wanted behaviour. > > Michai _______________________________________________ fossil-users mailing list fossil-users@lists.fossil-scm.org http://lists.fossil-scm.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fossil-users
