The command line service needs to store more information for use in -help and make it all dynamically accessible. For an example, see CVS. If we want people to use Mozilla as a framework for their apps, there needs to be an way for components to register command line options better so as to remove dependancies (bug 56654?). This bug is about allowing them also to place more context-sensitive help for their commands when they register them. When you display mozilla -help, it should show only a portion of this information. When you display mozilla -help [arg1] [arg2..], it should examples, etc of what you can do on different platforms, etc. For instance, this could also be hooked up to create a web page like the one in bug 60085 - attachment 108857 [details], but dynamic so that people can view the help without it being out of date (bug 184788). Yet, this bug is about the actual storage and access functions for this data, not how it will be displayed in the shell prompt or web page. I believe that the available commands should be stored within a tree, with the top level being the commands, and the lower level being the various arguments.

I don't want to support more than a single level of help (and really, I'm rethinking even that position, and might ask apps to implement help themself).