Comment by judofyr

It's a bit of a strange choice, but if you read the full documentation (man codesign) it's not too confusing actually:

    NAME
           codesign — Create and manipulate code signatures
    
    SYNOPSIS
           codesign -s identity [-i identifier] [-r requirements] [-fv] path ...
           codesign -v [-R requirement] [-v] [path|pid ...]
           codesign -d [-v] [path|pid ...]
           codesign -h [-v] [pid ...]
           codesign --validate-constraint path ...

The first argument to codesign has to be one of -s, -v, -d, -h, --validate-constraint and in reality it's closer to a subcommand (similar to how git as pull, push, merge etc). After that "-v" works as a regular option.

EDIT: I read the man page even further, and I was slightly wrong: It appears to be possible to pass regular options before the operation, but you're required to have one (and only) one operation.