xclip-copyfile's --help flag results in unexpected output

[astrand]

This is what happens when xclip-copyfile is ran with the --help flag:

$ /usr/bin/xclip-copyfile --help

tar: Usage: dirname NAME\n or: dirname OPTION\nOutput NAME with its last non-slash component and trailing slashes removed;\nif NAME contains no /'s, output `.' (meaning the current directory).\n\n --help display this help and exit\n --version output version information and exit\n\nExamples:\n dirname /usr/bin/ Output "/usr".\n dirname stdio.h Output ".".\n\nReport dirname bugs to bug-coreutils@gnu.org\nGNU coreutils home page: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/&gt;\nGeneral help using GNU software: <http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/&gt;\nFor complete documentation, run: info coreutils 'dirname invocation': Cannot chdir: No such file or directory
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

The same thing applies to xclip-cutfile and xclip-pastefile.

Reported by: bapabooiee

Original Ticket: xclip/bugs/5

[astrand]

Ah, silly me. This might not actually be a bug, per se, as it seems xclip-copyfile's parameters are simply passed to `tar'.

Though, I do still think that being bombarded with that kind of output when using the --help flag is quite unexpected.

Original comment by: bapabooiee

[astrand]

• summary: xclip-copyfile's --help flag passes its help output to `tar' --> xclip-copyfile's --help flag results in unexpected output

Original comment by: bapabooiee

[trofi]

+1. Gentoo also got downstream report about unexpected --help handling: https://bugs.gentoo.org/355887.

[orbea]

Would teaching xclip-copyfile about -h/--help and then printing an error for any other unknown command-line be an acceptable solution? Unfortunately tar(1) doesn't support -- and --verbatim-files-from would break support with older tar releases.