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Re: fix autotest option parsing
From: |
Ralf Wildenhues |
Subject: |
Re: fix autotest option parsing |
Date: |
Sun, 25 Feb 2007 10:58:50 +0100 |
User-agent: |
Mutt/1.5.13 (2007-02-12) |
Hi Eric,
* Eric Blake wrote on Sun, Feb 25, 2007 at 04:48:19AM CET:
>
> 1) POSIX suggests that implementations support compressed short options,
> even though it is not canonical style. I was bothered when I tried to
> save typing with 'tests/testsuite -lkm4sugar', and had to use the longer
> 'tests/testsuite -l -k m4sugar' instead.
It's a bit sad that this requires "$@" to remain untouched by the user.
Maybe it's time to add some tests (and maybe even documentation) for the
currently undocumented macros AT_ARG_OPTION and AT_ARG_OPTION_ARG.
Connected with this, I have some doubts: I don't think your patch will
fix things for options defined with those macros. Further, I don't even
see right away whether your patch doesn't require changes to
_AT_ARG_OPTION in order not to break that functionality.
That being said, I never liked the ability to clump short options
without arguments together with a short option with arguments, as in
-lkkeyword
That is just too ugly for words IMVHO. Clumping options without
arguments seems less of a problem to me. But even there I would
not mind _not_ providing this functionality in testsuite, if it
prevents other useful functionality, or if we cannot provide it
consistently.
For example, we obviously cannot provide the functionality of accepting
--ver as shorthand for --version, since we cannot know whether the user
may add an option --vertical. ;-)
> 2) GNU Coding standards require that 'tests/testsuite --version --help'
> output version info, not help.
I think the patch for this is obviously ok (although a test exercising
this for all programs that the Autoconf package has would be nice ;-)
Maybe you can write a gnulib module GCS-check that tests such stuff.
Or, even better, add it to Automake's distcheck target right away (for
all built/installed *_PROGRAMS and *_SCRIPTS in `gnu' or maybe only in
`gnits' mode). You can add those various requirements on `--version'
output, too, that I've neglected to write a patch for Automake for. ;-)
> 3) Not patched here. We should support -- to end options, to be
> consistent with POSIX, as in 'tests/testsuite -- foo=bar -2'.
I don't see any possible ambiguity ATM, so I don't think there is a need
for `--'.
> If this code is acceptable, I will need to add a test to the testsuite
> that exercises these features.
FWIW, I'd appreciate to see a patch including tests (or, even better,
documentation as well ;-). Very IMVHO though.
Cheers,
Ralf
> 2007-02-24 Eric Blake <address@hidden>
>
> * lib/autotest/general.m4 (AT_help_all): Recognize compressed
> short options. Obey GNU Coding Standards when presented both
> --help and --version.