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?

  • keyEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    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.

    • OscarEnglish
      0•1 year ago

      That is assuming it’s hosted on github.

        • OscarEnglish
          1•1 year ago

          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?

            • OscarEnglish
              2•1 year ago

              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).

                • OscarEnglish
                  2•1 year ago

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

    • @[email protected]
      1•1 year ago

      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

  • @[email protected]
    1•1 year ago

    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

  • ChrisEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    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]).

    • @[email protected]OP
      2•1 year ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]
        2•1 year ago

        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?

  • @[email protected]
    1•1 year ago

    You could read json from standard input. Ex:

    echo &lt;&lt; EOF | command --read-stdin
    Some JSON
EOF
  • falsem
    0•1 year ago

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

    • @[email protected]OP
      1•1 year ago

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

  • @[email protected]
    1•1 year ago

    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.