inconsistent commands and options ... a problem?

[Emanuele Aina]

solo turn osservò:

> the hg purge ad --print made me look up some information on commands
> and options, the result:
> 
> the inconsistency in its command set is the main reason i really could
> dislike mercurial if it was not so powerful.
> 
> there is --dry-run (rename) , --print (purge), hg incoming (as pulls
> --print), outgoing (as pushs --print)just to name a few. 

Leaving incoming and outgoing as they are, I can rename --print in 
--dry-run, but then it gives me some problems:

* how can I rename --print0? Unfortunately the --print0 in purge has
   also the additional problem of being different to the one in status,
   as in purge it implies --print/--dry-run. This is due to the fact that
   the default action in purge is to not print anything.
   Any suggestions about reorganizing all of them?

* --dry-run only says to do nothing, which is not very useful with the
   purge default of doing nothing. Should I make it also print
   automatically? Or you should need to use both --dry-run and --verbose
   to get an output?

> then there is
> the revisions which are stated always differently, like in bundle,
> merge, backout and diff, then there is -r in status.

Apart of adding --revision everywhere, in status we already have 
--deleted, so we need to think to something else to replace --removed.

> then there is the
> -a which is different in diff, in revert, in status. then there is hg

The one in diff is due to the traditional diff command and we can't 
change it. I think that the inconsistency in status and revert is not 
worth the trouble of replacing these very useful short options, as they 
are very different commands.

> sigs, hg view and hg log for listing change sets, 

This doesn't seems an inconsistency to me: one is a traditional textual 
log while the other is an advanced graphical interface. While looking 
forward for the integration of the "glog" extension in the main "log" 
command as an option, I don't see a reasonable way of merging log and view.

-- 
Buongiorno.
Complimenti per l'ottima scelta.