Re: -V, --version -- deprecated?

Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> --help and --version are the standard options that are supported 
> everywhere.  In the era before we had long options everywhere, we 
> implemented -V as an alternative in some programs, in particular those 
> in and around initdb, because of the version cross-checking it does 
> using those options.

Ok, good to know. FWIW "-V" is almost universal among the client 
binaries (not just those "in and around initdb").

> At one point, long options where broken on some BSD versions.  I don't 
> know what became of that, but if we don't have new information it might 
> be safest to leave things where they are.

Can anyone confirm this? (If this actually affects any modern platforms 
it means that "--help" doesn't work at the very least, which seems a Bad 
Thing. So I'm a little skeptical that this is still a problem.)

> Hence, the -V option is not the preferred public interface, so it's not 
> prominently documented, which may or may not be reasonable in minds 
> other than my own.

Fair enough, but I think it's inconsistent to document it in some places 
but not in others. I think we ought to either declare "-V" deprecated 
(and perhaps remove the docs for it), or accept that we need to live 
with it because of long-options silliness and document "-V" as a valid 
alternate.

-Neil