Fixing "juju help commands"

[Nate Finch]

If there are things we really don't want uses to run, they should probably
just not exist in production builds. If they're just less-used commands,
then I don't think it's a big deal to have them in juju help commands.

If we want to remove them from production builds, they could either be
compiled out by default, or just made into plugins.  But I don't think
hiding is really a good idea.

I am +1 on removing aliases from the default output of juju help commands,
though.  It's really long and spammy right now, and half of the length is
just due to aliases.

I do like the idea of every juju list-foos having an alias of juju foos...
but then why even have list-foos at all?

While we're on the subject... we have list-foos, show-foos, and get-foo...
and I honestly cannot remember when to use which. Can we just standardize
on one, so no one has to remember if it's list-models or show-models or
show-model-config or get-model-config?  They all mean the same thing, let's
just pick one.
On Tue, May 24, 2016, 8:12 AM Marco Ceppi <marco.ceppi at canonical.com> wrote:

> On Tue, May 24, 2016, 12:19 AM Tim Penhey <tim.penhey at canonical.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> More from the "let's fix the output" school of thought.
>>
>> One thing that has bugged me about 'juju help commands' was the repeated
>> mentions of "alias for <blah>".
>>
>> I propose that we don't show aliases by default, and allow the user to
>> task for them.
>>
>> Also, the supercommand describe commands method was written before I
>> knew about the tabular output, so some code could be cleaned up there.
>>
>> Proposal:
>>
>> juju help commands
>>    - shows the commands that are neither aliases, nor hidden
>> juju help commands --alias
>>    - shows either just the aliases, or everything including aliases
>> juju help commands --all
>>    - shows basic commands, aliases and hidden commands.
>>
>> I'd like to add the ability to say a command is hidden so it doesn't
>> show up in the commands list. The purpose for these could be debugging
>> assisting type functions, like "dump-model" or "debug-controller" (two
>> commands that don't yet exist).
>>
>
> I don't see a need for this, I and other users often use juju help
> commands to find or remind me of these commands. If you expect users to run
> these debug/dump commands ever, show them.
>
> Even if you don't expect people to run them, hidding them seems awkward.
> Better to simply educate with good help output about what the command does
> and when/why use the command.
>
>
>> Thoughts?
>>
>> Tim
>>
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