--help and --version are the standard options that are supported everywhere. In the era before we had long options everywhere, we implemented -V as an alternative in some programs, in particular those in and around initdb, because of the version cross-checking it does using those options.
Ok, good to know. FWIW "-V" is almost universal among the client binaries (not just those "in and around initdb").
At one point, long options where broken on some BSD versions. I don't know what became of that, but if we don't have new information it might be safest to leave things where they are.
Can anyone confirm this? (If this actually affects any modern platforms it means that "--help" doesn't work at the very least, which seems a Bad Thing. So I'm a little skeptical that this is still a problem.)
Hence, the -V option is not the preferred public interface, so it's not prominently documented, which may or may not be reasonable in minds other than my own.
Fair enough, but I think it's inconsistent to document it in some places but not in others. I think we ought to either declare "-V" deprecated (and perhaps remove the docs for it), or accept that we need to live with it because of long-options silliness and document "-V" as a valid alternate.
-Neil
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