On Sat, Dec 18, 2021 at 2:16 PM Serhiy Storchaka <storch...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The output of "python -h" is 104 lines long now. It was only 51 lines in > 3.6. 35% of it is about the -X option, and 30% about environment > variables. Also some lines in the -X option description are too long > (102 columns). Both topics are "advanced" and mostly interested for > debugging. I suggest to move them out of the main help output. > Sounds like a good plan. > The are two options: > > 1. Move it to pydoc topics. The advantage is that it is a standard way, > there are already 88 topics. The disadvantage is that this information > will be not available in "minimal" installations of Python which do not > include docs. > > 2. Add command-line options like -hX and -henv. The information will > always be available with the interpreter, but the interface is special. > For -X, I suggest we could output the following line: -X opt : implementation-specific option; use -X help to list options. We could also see if we can put the help text for each of the supported -X flags in the table defining these flags (sorry, I can't recall where it lives, but I'm pretty sure I've seen such a table.) For env vars I think moving this to pydoc is fine; I don't think we have a process or mechanism that ensures the docs for env vars are even complete. (We don't have one for the flags either, but somehow I find it hard to conceive of someone adding a new command line flag without them or someone else involved in the code review thinking of updating the help text. But I find it quite conceivable that someone adds a new env var used only in a corner case without anyone thinking to update the docs. And I presume that the -E flag isn't honored 100% of the time either.) But I wouldn't object to a -h sub-option that lists environment vars either. -- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido) *Pronouns: he/him **(why is my pronoun here?)* <http://feministing.com/2015/02/03/how-using-they-as-a-singular-pronoun-can-change-the-world/>
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