Re: [PATCH 0/6] notmuch cli config changes

[Jameson Graef Rollins <jrollins@finestructure.net>]

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On Tue, Jan 29 2013, Jani Nikula <jani@nikula.org> wrote:
> Hi all, the goal here is to add support for --config=FILE option at the
> notmuch top level (e.g. 'notmuch --config=FILE search foo'). In order to
> achieve this neatly, I ended up moving config open/close to main() from
> subcommands. This isn't a bad thing, because all notmuch commands opened
> the config file anyway.

Hi, Jani.  I appreciate you've put a lot of work into this series, but
I'll be the same devil's advocate that I was to David previously.  Why
do we need a command line option here when we already have an
environment variable that handles just this?  Is there some benefit to
having a command line option for this that I don't see?  I see this as
another instance of an option that regular users will rarely use, if
ever.

In general, I am a strong advocate of keeping the CLI slim.  IMHO,
adding more options makes the interface clunkier, and the manual harder
to parse, and I'm against adding things that a normal user would likely
never use.  In retrospect, I should have had the same objection to the
--format-version option, which I think could have just been an env var
as well.

jamie.

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