Prevent flags from being inherited by subcommands?

[jotaen]

Consider the following structure of my app foo:

type cli struct {
	Version bool
	Subcommand  Subcommand `cmd:"" help:"Some subcommand"`
}

(Demo: https://play.golang.org/p/SldnjrkVsxd)

If I run foo subcommand -h to print the help for my subcommand, it also includes the --version flag from the parent in the help output. In this case, I don’t want that, though, but I only want --version to be available and displayed on the base command.

Is there a way to achieve this?

The only way I could find is marking the Version flag as hidden:"1". That’s a bit hacky, however, because a) it’s still processed, and b) it doesn’t show up in the base help output anymore.

[alecthomas]

I can't recall exactly, but if it's possible it would be in one of the help options or alternate formatters. Check them out.

[mitar]

I am also curious about this.

[alecthomas]

FWIW the Kong behaviour is often called "interspersed" flags and arguments, so if this were made into an option it would be something like kong.AllowInterspersed(false).

[mitar]

I would personally like something in the middle: that parsing succeeds for interspersed flags, but that help does not mention those flags from higher levels.

[jotaen]

Just for reference, I was able to workaround my issue by making Subcommand a default command (via default:"") and then making Version a flag of the subcommand. That way, --version can be called on the base command directly, but it’s not inherited by other subcommands. Downside is that it doesn’t appear on the help text of the base command. This workaround is possible since #217 was fixed.