[getopt-sig] More about commands on the command line

[Greg Ward]

On 08 March 2002, Russ Cox said:
> This is where I think those who objected (and myself) differ with you.
> In my mind, CVS-like command lines are bad program design.  If you've
> got multiple commands, give them multiple names.

I only half agree with you here.  I definitely think tar and rpm suck
for all the reasons stated.  But CVS is not too bad; it really doesn't
matter whether you spell it "cvs commit" or "cvs-commit", because it's
crystal clear what the sub-command is.

In the case of the Distutils, where we quite obviously stole CVS' UI,
there's a very good reason for a "sub-command" style interface: there is
only one setup.py with a given package.  We didn't want to make people
distribute build.py, install.py, etc. (although as I recall that idea
never even came up).  I think it works pretty well, again because it's
quite clear what the sub-command is.

        Greg
-- 
Greg Ward - Unix nerd                                   gward@python.net
http://starship.python.net/~gward/
Dyslexics of the world, untie!