Introduction to GDAL Utilities - Open Source Geospatial Tools: Applications in Earth Observation - page 61

Command line switches are mostly invoked with a single dash ( - , also referred
to as short option) and sometimes with a double dash ( -- , also referred to as long
option). With a few exceptions ( gdal_calc.py for instance), GDAL reserves the
long options for “general” options. Unlike the utility specific options, the general
options are not related to one utility. They can be listed with the long help option
--help-general , preceded by any GDAL utility (e.g. gdalinfo ):
gdalinfo --help-general
Generic GDAL utility command options:
—-version
Report version of GDAL in use.
—-license
Report GDAL license info.
—-formats
Report all configured format drivers.
—-format [format]
Details of one format.
—-optfile filename
Expand an option file into the argument list.
—-config key value
Set system configuration option.
—-debug [on/off/value]
Set debug level.
—-pause
Wait for user input, time to attach debugger.
—-locale [locale]
Install locale for debugging (i.e. en_US.UTF-8).
—-help-general
Report detailed help on general options.