Bug 70938

Summary:	make rpm command line do error checking
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	Jamie Zawinski <jwz>
Component:	rpm	Assignee:	Jeff Johnson <jbj>
Status:	CLOSED RAWHIDE	QA Contact:
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	7.0
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2002-08-07 02:56:14 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Jamie Zawinski 2002-08-07 02:56:10 UTC

I wasted quite a bit of time finding out that

    rpm --noscripts -e abisuite

does not work, but

    rpm -e --noscripts abisuite

does what I expected.

If one argument (for example, --noscripts) cannot preceed another argument (for
example, -e) then an error message should be produced, it shouldn't just
silently ignore it.

Of course it SHOULD just do what I obviously meant, but I'm going to aim low and
just ask that you add *diagnostics* rather than fixing the whole braindead chain
of logic in the argument parser.

Whoever inflicted the rpm command-line on us should be skinned alive with a
rusty spoon.

rpm-4.0.4-7x
RH 7.0
Linux 2.2.16-22 #1 Tue Aug 22 16:49:06 EDT 2000 i686 unknown

Comment 1 Jeff Johnson 2002-08-07 19:39:35 UTC

I believe this is fixed in rpm-4.1 (hmmm, checking, yes).

You have no idea how much pain the rpm CLI has caused me.
I believe that most all the real weirdities have been addressed,
with the exception of better diagnostics for conflicting
and/or mutually exclusive options. However save your spoon
for someone else, it wasn't me who created all the options.