[openstack-dev] openstack command line and --help for subcommands

Perry, Sean sean.perry at hp.com
Thu Jul 9 16:08:15 UTC 2015


Excellent. Can the tickets be assigned to me and re-opened?

From: Steve Martinelli [mailto:stevemar at ca.ibm.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2015 8:28 PM
To: OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions)
Subject: Re: [openstack-dev] openstack command line and --help for subcommands


Sean, Dean and I spoke about this at the last summit and we agreed that --help should be included. I wanted to do this work item, but other priorities came up, if you're happy to do the code, I'll be happy to review it!

Thanks,

Steve Martinelli
OpenStack Keystone Core

[Inactive hide details for "Perry, Sean" ---2015/07/08 07:53:37 PM---There are two similar tickets marked as invalid: 1444983 an]"Perry, Sean" ---2015/07/08 07:53:37 PM---There are two similar tickets marked as invalid: 1444983 and 1251290. Both discuss the fact that 'op

From: "Perry, Sean" <sean.perry at hp.com<mailto:sean.perry at hp.com>>
To: "openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org<mailto:openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org>" <openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org<mailto:openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org>>
Date: 2015/07/08 07:53 PM
Subject: [openstack-dev] openstack command line and --help for subcommands

________________________________



There are two similar tickets marked as invalid: 1444983 and 1251290. Both discuss the fact that 'openstack subcommand function -help' does not work. Try 'openstack service list -format foo'. You get the help output. It even says that -h provides help. But it is ignored and you get the global help. That is not good UX. Both tickets are closed because "openstack help service list" is supposed to be the proper usage. It is my opinion that is wrong. Users actually expect -help to work as witnessed by two tickets over 3 years. Others like me would have opened a ticket had they not found the existing one. If using the help verb is the only way to get help then the help output needs to stop recommending -h. But really, the help verb should list the possible verbs and -help should be used for the individual subcommands. This is how many, many other CLIs work so admins the world over expect it.

Yes, I will step up and do the coding if the patch will be accepted.

If there is some other place to argue the UX aspects please direct me there.

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