Re: [jboss-as7-dev] CLI arguments convention

The most usable command line interface I've ever seen is on the AS/400. If you need help with a command, you type the command and hit the help key. Then you are presented with a form showing all the arguments and default values. So the help is right there where you need it as you fill out a form for the command. The AS/400 has the advantage that they have full control over the terminal and you can easily lay out these forms when needed. However, for our CLI, we could have a "prompt me" mode that prompts for each argument, showing default values and explanations along the way. [localhost:9999 /] promptme deploy local file? /foo.war server deployable name (foo.war)? my_war_name.war runtime name (my_war_name.war)? my_war_runtime.war deploy to servergroup1 (yes)? deploy to servergroup2 (yes)? no **result: foo.war was uploaded to domain and deployed to servergroup1 [localhost:9999 /] Quoting Alexey Loubyansky <alexey.loubyansky(a)redhat.com&gt;: > > On 04/19/2011 04:29 PM, David M. Lloyd wrote: >> On 04/19/2011 08:31 AM, Alexey Loubyansky wrote: >>> >>> In addition, it's kind of a proprietary convention. We discussed this >>> with Max today and I'm looking into the GNU convention for command line >>> arguments >> >> That is a common convention -- for command line arguments. For >> interactive command lines (examples I'm thinking of include 3com and >> Cisco network management CLIs, as well as commands such as linux's "ip" >> command which have widely variable arguments), usually it's more like: >> >> create-jms-cf name mycf entries foo bar baz > > Here is the full version > > [localhost:9999 /] create-jms-cf > > --help name= > auto-group= > entries= connector= > block-on-acknowledge= > block-on-durable-send= block-on-non-durable-send= > cache-large-message-client= > call-timeout= client-failure-check-period= > client-id= > confirmation-window-size= connection-ttl= > consumer-max-rate= > consumer-window-size= discovery-group-name= > dups-ok-batch-size= > failover-on-initial-connection= failover-on-server-shutdown= > group-id= > max-retry-interval= min-large-message-size= > pre-acknowledge= > producer-max-rate= producer-window-size= > reconnect-attempts= > retry-interval= retry-interval-multiplier= > scheduled-thread-pool-max-size= > thread-pool-max-size= transaction-batch-size= > use-global-pools= > > >> Of course this falls apart for "deploy" unless you do something like this: >> >> deploy file mything.war as myblah.war runtime-name yourblah.war >> >> or something (i.e. make it somewhat more fluent and less shell-ish). > > Ok, so you'd actually prefer a simplicity instead of a standard convention. > I'll think about it (and if somebody has suggestions, please, share) but > if that doesn't work out we'll have to choose an existing convention. > >>> And another point is the use of '='. Some command lines don't use it, e.g. >>> >>> deploy --file my.war --name my_war_name.war --runtime-name >>> my_war_runtime_name.war >>> >>> and some do >>> >>> deploy --file=my.war --name=my_war_name.war >>> --runtime-name=my_war_runtime_name.war >> >> And some command lines support both :) > > That's too messy, IMO. > > Thanks, > Alexey > _______________________________________________ > jboss-as7-dev mailing list > jboss-as7-dev(a)lists.jboss.org > https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/jboss-as7-dev > _______________________________________________ jboss-as7-dev mailing list jboss-as7-dev(a)lists.jboss.org https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/jboss-as7-dev