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

[Jani Nikula <jani@nikula.org>]

On Wed, 06 Feb 2013, Jameson Graef Rollins <jrollins@finestructure.net> wrote:
> 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.

Fair enough.

In any case I see patches 1-4, and to an extent also patch 5, as useful
refactoring and cleanup. Also, if we ever end up having any top level
arguments that need to be passed to subcommands, I think patches 1-5 are
good prep work. The config struct could be extended to include both
settings from the config file and settings from the top level
arguments. But this is just a bonus in addition to the refactoring part.

> 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.

What is a "normal user"? I'm a user too.


BR,
Jani.