On Mon, 10 Oct 2011 16:59:06 +0300, Tomi Ollila <tomi.ollila@iki.fi> wrote:
> 
> In this case there would be 2 transitional syntaxes. IMHO 
> 
> 'notmuch dump <search-terms>' causes least transitional pain.
> 

I don't understand what you mean here. Can you elaborate?

  notmuch dump <search-terms> 

is not a transitional syntax, but rather a new syntax that breaks
existing scripts. 

The advantage of using -- here is that it allows things like

    notmuch dump --format=something-better -- --output

to search for --output (of course the query is then parsed a bit
surprisingly, but this is a different issue.)

d