Now working on converting git-annex to use optparse-applicative for its command line parsing. I've wanted to do this for a long time, because the current code for options is generally horrible, runs in IO, and is not at all type safe, while optparse-applicative has wonderful composable parsers and lets each subcommand have its own data type repesenting all its options.

What pushed me over the edge is that optparse-applicative has automatic bash completion!

# source <(git-annex --bash-completion-script `which git-annex`)
# git-annex fsck -
--all                   --key                   -S
--from                  --more                  -U

Since nobody has managed to write a full bash completion for git-annex before, let alone keep it up-to-date with changes to the code, automating the problem away is a really nice win.

The conversion is a rather huge undertaking; the diff is already over 3000 lines large after 8 hours of work, and I'm maybe 1/3rd done, with the groundwork laid (except for global options still todo) and a few subcommands converted. This won't land for this week's release; it'll need a lot of testing before it'll be ready for any release.