Version flag inconsistent with other packages

[jbburf]

Hi, I raised this on the expo-cli which pointed me back here. I've gotten used to using either the "-v" flag or the "--version" flag to get a packages version from the CLI. I've checked the following packages and they all follow this convention: node, nvm, npm, yarn, make, brew. Why have you all standardized around "-V" instead of "-v"?

[shadowspawn]

The reasoning was to leave the lowercase -v option available for the program, especially for "verbose". The default Commander flags date back 10 years:

• https://github.com/tj/commander.js/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#031--2011-10-31
• 9656c37
• Make version flags configurable #22

Related issues: #509 #560 #1182 #1258

External references:

• https://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/standard-options.html
• https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/108141
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch10s05.html

(Note: the default flags used by Commander for version are -V, --version, but the author may customise the version flags and description using .version().)

[shadowspawn]

One thing that is widely consistent across applications and cli frameworks is the long flag --version.

[shadowspawn]

An answer was provided, and no further activity in a month. Closing this as resolved.

Feel free to open a new issue if it comes up again, with new information and renewed interest.

[shadowspawn]

For interest a couple more references:

From https://clig.dev/#arguments-and-flags

--version: Version.
-v: This can often mean either verbose or version. You might want to use -d for verbose and this for version, or for nothing to avoid confusion.

From https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/commandline/syntax

• --version is the built-in option to display the version in System.CommandLine
• -v should only be used as the short form of --verbosity