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Maniphest T2700

Clean up the command line interface (avoid abbreviated --long-options, consistency)
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Description

Currently, gpg has some long options that are abbreviated. This is a usability
problem, since one has to remember which ones are abbreviated, and how.
Furthermore, it is hard to pronounce them, forcing one to spell them out, e. g.
"please do gpg dash dash receive keys foo" - [gpg --receive-keys foo] fails -
"no, sorry, I mean r-e-c-v-dash-keys".

The plan is to go over all options, replace offending options with unabbreviated
ones, keeping an alias for the old option so that we don't break scripts and
muscle memory, and update the documentation.

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Event Timeline

justus added projects: gnupg (gpg22), Feature Request, gnupg.Sep 23 2016, 11:18 AM
justus added a subscriber: justus.
justus added a comment.Sep 23 2016, 2:44 PM

Also, most options join words with hyphens, but some don't.

justus renamed this task from Avoid abbreviated --long-options, e.g. --recv-keys to Clean up the command line interface (avoid abbreviated --long-options, consistency).Sep 23 2016, 2:44 PM
• werner added a subscriber: • werner.Sep 28 2016, 9:36 AM

Please do that as soon as you have some spare time. Take care not to chnage
translated strings.

justus added a comment.Oct 6 2016, 11:48 AM

I have created two sample commits, pushed to

https://git.gnupg.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=gnupg.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/justus/issue2700

The second one does indeed change translated strings. If I don't update
translated strings, then the messages will still refer to the old version of the
options, which will still work but won't show up in '--help'. Is there a
problem with updating the strings when I also update the .po files?

dkg added a subscriber: dkg.Oct 6 2016, 4:26 PM

another item for consistency is gpg-agent's different behavior between
--enable-ssh-socket and --extra-socket (and the undocumented --browser-socket,
for that matter, but since it's not documented maybe it's fine to just change
that one).

justus added a comment.Dec 15 2016, 5:27 PM

Fixed for gpg as of 6b16b02109f4bb5b934e456667ff4c0ba7bc85fd.

justus added a project: In Progress.Dec 15 2016, 5:27 PM
justus added a comment.Dec 16 2016, 2:46 PM

I went over the other programs, and did not see any glaring problems. I have
decided to ignore the socket configuration for now. I'm quite happy with the
changes, but feel free to reopen this bug.

justus closed this task as Resolved.Dec 16 2016, 2:46 PM
justus removed a project: In Progress.