Help text for subcommand options

[jwheare]

A subcommand can have options with descriptions defined but I can't see how to make them show up in the help text. It just shows:
subcommand [options]

Is it possible to expand this just as the global options are at the top of the help text?

[shadowspawn]

To see the options for the subcommand:

command subcommand --help

You can also install a Custom help listener for the subcommand to supply additional information about the subcommand to display when its help is requested.

[jwheare]

Ah, thanks, would be good to get this documented. Also is there a way to programmatically trigger it? Thinking of a subcommand like:

command help <subcommand>

Would be useful for people familiar with git's help system.

[jwheare]

Looks like this is already stubbed but doesn't seem to do anything:

commander.js/index.js

Lines 210 to 212 in 82d0d0a

	Command.prototype.addImplicitHelpCommand = function() {
	this.command('help [cmd]', 'display help for [cmd]');
	};

[shadowspawn]

The current behaviour is when using a git-style (sub)command, these two are equivalent, and call the (sub)command with --help to display its help:

my-command help foo
my-command foo --help

[claytongulick]

I'm running into this as well. Not sure what the correct approach is.

My structure looks like this:
Top command: reporting (this is npm linked)
Sub commands: reporting-datapump, reporting-scheduler (these are all also npm linked bins)
Sub Sub commands: reporting-datapump clean [options] - this has an action handler, and does the work.

So, from what I can tell, there's no way to get what the [options] are from top level help. These combinations fail:

reporting help datapump
reporting datapump --help
reporting help datapump drop
reporting-datapump help
reporting-datapump help drop -- this shows nothing ?!?

This works:
reporting-datapump drop --help
and this:
reporting datapump drop --help

Perhaps this could all be solved by some sort of recursive help option? I.e. optionally navigate all sub commands recursively and aggregate their helps?

It's not a great user interface for the user to have to guess that specific command in order to see the options for the sub-sub-command help.

My expectation, as a user, would be that when I do:
reporting help datapump or reporting datapump --help I would be able to see all of the sub commands and their options.

[shadowspawn]

Interesting example of npm -l given in #521 (comment)

[shadowspawn]

For original poster, there are related changes in the published pre-release of Commander v5.0.0 (#1163)

• there is an implicit help command added when there are subcommands
• the README now includes a short section under "Automated help" covering getting help for a subcommand

[shadowspawn]

Commander v5.0.0 has been released with improvements to the help command, and to the README.

https://github.com/tj/commander.js/releases/tag/v5.0.0

[shadowspawn]

Opened poll on possible enhancements to global options: #1551