[Caml-list] [RFC] new OPAM command-line interface

[Caml-list] [RFC] new OPAM command-line interface

[Thomas Gazagnaire]

Hi,

In order to prepare the beta release of OPAM (which should hopefully be announced at the end of next week if everything goes well), I've been working on improving its command-line interface (which is currently a bit had-hoc). Thanks to the great Daniel Bunzli's cmdliner[1] library, I now have a nice -- but incompatible -- command-line interface in the 'cmdliner' branch[2].

The main changes are:
* an uniform help interface, where all flags and parameters are correctly documents
* no more -long-option, only -s or --long
* 'opam remote' is still there for convenience but will be deprecated; use 'opam repository' instead
* use of sub-sub-commands when necessary (ie. 'opam repository add')
* use non-ambiguous prefix of sub-command instead of the subcommand (ie. 'opam repo' or 'opam rem')
* AND: a nice 'opam --help' and 'opam <subcommand> --help' output

I'm quite keen to get community feedback on this new command-line. Feel free to comment here, or to to use the issue tracker[3].

Cheers,
Thomas

[1] http://erratique.ch/software/cmdliner
[2] git clone -b cmdliner git://github.com/OCamlPro/opam.git
[3] https://github.com/OCamlPro/opam/issues/157

Re: [Caml-list] [RFC] new OPAM command-line interface

[Wojciech Meyer]

Hi Thomas,

Thomas Gazagnaire <thomas@ocamlpro.com> writes:

> [2] git clone -b cmdliner git://github.com/OCamlPro/opam.git

It it possible to upgrade OPAM straight from the git repository from the
particular branch? It would make such experiments make easier, and it
might also accelerate the development of OPAM, people will try more often
new features and you will get back better feedback.

The new interface based on Cmdliner is really neat!

Thanks,

--
Wojciech Meyer
http://danmey.org

Re: [Caml-list] [RFC] new OPAM command-line interface

[Wojciech Meyer]

Thomas Gazagnaire <thomas@ocamlpro.com> writes:

> What do you mean ? Are you looking for 'git checkout cmdliner' ?

Actually, rather:

  opam install opam-git {some variable substitution that specifies branch}

> Thanks! We should thank Daniel for its nice library :-)

yep, Cmdliner is one of these libraries that is just fun to use.

--
Wojciech Meyer
http://danmey.org

Re: [Caml-list] [RFC] new OPAM command-line interface

[Ashish Agarwal]

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Hi. The new interface is nice! A couple of minor comments:

When you have sub-commands, I think it's best to make the options come
after the last sub-command. The synopsis for opam switch suggests you can
put options before the second sub-command. This might be okay if the option
really relates to the first sub-command, but I don't see that in this case.

I'm not a fan of having too many names for the same thing. For example, in
opam switch, there is "add = install, rm = remove, and show = current".
Better to just pick one. The single letter -o and longer --option is okay,
especially for highly used options.

Thanks.

On Fri, Dec 14, 2012 at 1:09 PM, Thomas Gazagnaire <thomas@ocamlpro.com>wrote:

> Hi,
>
> In order to prepare the beta release of OPAM (which should hopefully be
> announced at the end of next week if everything goes well), I've been
> working on improving its command-line interface (which is currently a bit
> had-hoc). Thanks to the great Daniel Bunzli's cmdliner[1] library, I now
> have a nice -- but incompatible -- command-line interface in the 'cmdliner'
> branch[2].
>
> The main changes are:
> * an uniform help interface, where all flags and parameters are correctly
> documents
> * no more -long-option, only -s or --long
> * 'opam remote' is still there for convenience but will be deprecated; use
> 'opam repository' instead
> * use of sub-sub-commands when necessary (ie. 'opam repository add')
> * use non-ambiguous prefix of sub-command instead of the subcommand (ie.
> 'opam repo' or 'opam rem')
> * AND: a nice 'opam --help' and 'opam <subcommand> --help' output
>
> I'm quite keen to get community feedback on this new command-line. Feel
> free to comment here, or to to use the issue tracker[3].
>
> Cheers,
> Thomas
>
> [1] http://erratique.ch/software/cmdliner
> [2] git clone -b cmdliner git://github.com/OCamlPro/opam.git
> [3] https://github.com/OCamlPro/opam/issues/157
>
>
>
>
> --
> Caml-list mailing list.  Subscription management and archives:
> https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list
> Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
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[Caml-list] Re: [RFC] new OPAM command-line interface

[Thomas Gazagnaire]

Hi,

Just to let people know that I've taken into account most of the remarks (even if I still have few changes to do) so I've merged the cmdliner branch into the main tree. Please use the master branch now for testing.
Also, due to an unfortunate sequence of actions (see [1]) all previous release of OPAM will likely not compile from source anymore because an url change. To fix this, I've release 0.8.3, so packager should upgrade ASAP (this is already available in homebrew for OSX users). 0.9.0 should also be released quite soon, I'm fixing the few remaining blocker bugs that showed off before christmas.

Regards,
Thomas

[1] https://github.com/OCamlPro/opam/issues/347

On Dec 14, 2012, at 7:09 PM, Thomas Gazagnaire wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> In order to prepare the beta release of OPAM (which should hopefully be announced at the end of next week if everything goes well), I've been working on improving its command-line interface (which is currently a bit had-hoc). Thanks to the great Daniel Bunzli's cmdliner[1] library, I now have a nice -- but incompatible -- command-line interface in the 'cmdliner' branch[2].
> 
> The main changes are:
> * an uniform help interface, where all flags and parameters are correctly documents
> * no more -long-option, only -s or --long
> * 'opam remote' is still there for convenience but will be deprecated; use 'opam repository' instead
> * use of sub-sub-commands when necessary (ie. 'opam repository add')
> * use non-ambiguous prefix of sub-command instead of the subcommand (ie. 'opam repo' or 'opam rem')
> * AND: a nice 'opam --help' and 'opam <subcommand> --help' output
> 
> I'm quite keen to get community feedback on this new command-line. Feel free to comment here, or to to use the issue tracker[3].
> 
> Cheers,
> Thomas
> 
> [1] http://erratique.ch/software/cmdliner
> [2] git clone -b cmdliner git://github.com/OCamlPro/opam.git
> [3] https://github.com/OCamlPro/opam/issues/157
> 
> 
>