Background

I am designing a CLI for a container build tool I am making. It uses Gentoo’s Portage behind the scenes

Question

I want to give the user the ability to specify a custom package repository. The repository must have a name, URI and sync type.

custom_repo: {
    uri: 'https://...',
    name: 'custom',
    sync_type: 'git',
}

How do I have the user represent this in the CLI? keep in mind, this is not the main input and is optional.

One way is to make this only provide-able via a config file using JSON or another structured data representation. But I want to see if theres a good way to do it in the CLI

What I am thinking of: command --custom-repo uri='https://...',name=custom,sync_type=git --custom-repo ... [main input]

Is this the best way of doing this?

For something like that i’d take a parameter like this (repeated as necessary):

--custom-repo=<name>=<synctype>+<url>

for example:

--custom-repo=custom=git+https://github.com/matcha/custom

What language? This would be simple with Python’s argparse or Go’s pflag.

Can’t this all be deduced from the URI?

https://github.com/org/project.git

The .git suffix indicates git, the project name is the stem (project).

Oscar
link
fedilink
English
09M

That is assuming it’s hosted on github.

That is an example URI.

Oscar
link
fedilink
English
1
edit-2
9M

Ok, then I don’t understand at all. What happens if I host my git project on https://myawesomeproject.dev/? How can the application infer anything by this URL?

Then replace “github.com” with “myawesomeproject.dev”. There’s more to the URI than just the hostname.

Oscar
link
fedilink
English
29M

But you can’t assume that it follows the github format of https://<domain>/<user>/<project>.git. In my example, I meant that you would just use that url to clone it:

git clone https://myawesomeproject.dev

One real-world example of this is ziglings.org (though it’s technically just a redirect).

That’s not a GitHub format; it’s a git format.

Oscar
link
fedilink
English
29M

No, it isn’t. Git doesn’t care what the url is, as long as it uses a supported transport protocol.

@Corngood@lemmy.ml
link
fedilink
1
edit-2
9M

Nix does something like this with the protocol specifier: e.g. git+https://...

I’m not sure what name means here exactly, but it might make sense to treat that separately, like git remotes:

tool add [name] git+https://foo

You could read json from standard input. Ex:

echo &lt;&lt; EOF | command --read-stdin
    Some JSON
EOF
Chris
link
fedilink
English
29M

Just pass in the name of a json file as a CLI input (or default the name and act on it if present or use it if indicated [e.g. /U == use json.config]).

@matcha_addict@lemy.lol
creator
link
fedilink
29M

I will definitely make that an option, but I would still want it to be invokable via CLI only if the user chooses. It makes scripting easier sometimes.

How about a command-line flag to name an input file, but also process input as JSON, so someone can pipe it to your command or hand-write it if they’re crazy?

key
link
fedilink
English
29M

If the json payload is small with finite keys you can support separate args for those keys. If you really need arbitrary json what you have described is fairly reasonable as a shorthand, similar to AWS CLI shorthand.

Honestly passing optional/advanced args as json via CLI isn’t usually too bad since you can quote it with single quotes.

command --git-url https://... --alias myalias --svn-url http://... --alias mysvnalias

You may process it as a stack.

When reading within the program from stdin I recommend a state machine.

falsem
link
fedilink
09M

command --custom-repo-uri https://foo.com --custom-repo-name repo_name --custom-repo-sync-type git

@matcha_addict@lemy.lol
creator
link
fedilink
19M

There could be multiple custom repos, so it would be difficult to know which uri goes with which repo name, and so on.

Create a post

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person’s post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Rules

  • Follow the programming.dev instance rules
  • Keep content related to programming in some way
  • If you’re posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don’t want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev



  • 1 user online
  • 1 user / day
  • 1 user / week
  • 1 user / month
  • 1 user / 6 months
  • 1 subscriber
  • 1.21K Posts
  • 17.8K Comments
  • Modlog