Re: Make --help output fit within 80 columns per line

Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org>

From: Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org>
To: torikoshia <torikoshia@oss.nttdata.com>, Masahiro Ikeda <ikedamsh@oss.nttdata.com>
Cc: Pgsql Hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: 2023-09-12T06:27:35Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
I like this work a lot.  It's good to give developers easy to verify 
guidance about formatting the --help messages.

However, I think instead of just adding a bunch of line breaks to 
satisfy the test, we should really try to make the lines shorter by 
rewording.  Otherwise, chances are we are making the usability worse for 
many users, because it's more likely that part of the help will scroll 
off the screen.  For example, in many cases, we could replace "do not" 
by "don't", or we could decrease the indentation of the second column by 
a few spaces, or just reword altogether.

Also, it would be very useful if the TAP test function could print out 
the violating lines if a test fails.  (Similar to how is() and like() 
print the failing values.)  Maybe start with that, and then it's easier 
to play with different wording variants to try to make it fit better.



Commits

  1. Add test for checking the line length of --help output

  2. Remove environment-variable-based defaults in psql --help