Consider whether --keep-going deserves a short flag (-k?)

[dtolnay]

This issue is to track a suggestion brought forth by @joshtriplett in #10383 (comment).

"I'd also love to see a -k shorthand added, similar to make -k; the nature of this option is such that it'd should be easy for people to invoke."

As part of stabilization of --keep-going in #10496 (comment), it was decided to stabilize without -k and defer a thorougher consideration of -k to a followup issue.

"For -k short alias, I'll create an issue for it after the FCP."

[dtolnay]

FWIW for my own use case in https://github.com/dtolnay/trybuild which motivated --keep-going, I don't need -k and wouldn't use it.

[joshtriplett]

One option would be to go ahead and add this, on the theory that people may want it. Another would be to let people use --keep-going for a while, and see if it gets used manually (rather than by other tools) often enough to warrant a short option.

[epage]

I lean towards the latter.

[joshtriplett]

Likewise.

[after-ephemera]

Hi team, have we been able to collect any data on whether the full --keep-going flag has been used manually at this point?

[dtolnay]

I have been happily using --keep-going in the trybuild crate for 9 months to great effect, which was my original motivation for contributing this flag. So far I have not had any occasion to use this flag in interactive command-line usage, despite the existence of the flag being clearly well-known to me.

I think I would close this issue, and just rely on anyone for whom this flag appears commonly in their interactive workflow to make the case for a short flag in a separate issue, as they would for any other long-only flag that has been stable for longer.

[saurik]

Did you also not use it with make? :( FWIW, I use it all the time with make... it is much more rare that I want to have a build stop short despite a single error. ;P I often want to start a long build and then task switch away to come back to a really complete list of errors to deal with.