[llvm-dev] Accept --long-option but not -long-option for llvm binary utilities

[Reid Kleckner via llvm-dev]

Are you proposing to make this the new style across all LLVM utilities?
That seems needlessly disruptive. There are plenty of scripts that call
`opt` and `llc` directly with single dash long options, regardless of how
much we claim that they are not public facing, and are only developer tools.

If you want to add a flag to ParseCommandLineOptions so that individual
LLVM tools can opt into the new behavior gradually, I think that would be
reasonable.

On Mon, Apr 15, 2019 at 11:41 PM Fāng-ruì Sòng via llvm-dev <
llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:

> Many llvm utilities use cl::ParseCommandLineOptions()
> (include/Support/CommandLine.h) to parse command line options. The cl
> library accepts both -long-option and --long-option forms, with the single
> dash form (-long-option) being more popular.
>
> We also have many binary utilities (llvm-objcopy llvm-objdump llvm-readobj
> llvm-size ...) whose names reflect what they imitate. For compatibility
> with GNU binutils (and some Unix utilities transitively), these utilities
> accept many short options. People who use llvm utilities as replacement of
> GNU binutils may use the grouped option syntax (POSIX Utility Conventions),
> e.g. -Sx => -S -x, -Wd => -W -d, -sj.text => -s -j.text
>
> The problem is, grouped short options don't play well with -long-option.
> Sometimes there can be ambiguity. The issue is more prominent if the short
> option accepts an argument.
>
> An approach to prevent the ambiguity is to just disallow -long-option.
> In D60439, I plan to make llvm-objcopy accept --long-option but not
> -long-option.
> It will make its command line option parsing behave more like GNU objcopy
> and less like a regular llvm utility. What do people think of the
> divergence?
>
> Further, can we make similar changes to other llvm binary utilities (their
> names give people the expectation), especially those with many short
> options such as llvm-objdump and llvm-readobj? llvm-readobj behaves like
> GNU readelf if you name it "llvm-readelf". (I don't suggest disallowing
> -long-option for utilities other than binutils)
>
> (Note, llvm-objcopy is a new member of the family and it uses tablegen
> based include/llvm/Option/Opton.h, instead of cl:: as other utilities do.)
>
>
>
> --
> 宋方睿
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