Option collisions and the configuration file
kseistrup opened this issue · comments
This post is more about the general picture, but in case my examples are in conflict with the latest phetch, I am specifically referring to dd6e7ee.
Phetch now has so many commandline options and a configuration file that I feel it's time to reflect on option names, shortcuts, and how these interact with the configuration file.
What I see now is:
$ phetch --help
phetch - quick lil gopher client (v0.1.13-dev - 2020-01-11)
Usage:
phetch [options] Launch phetch in interactive mode
phetch [options] [url] Open Gopher URL in interactive mode
Options:
-t, --tls Try to open all pages w/ TLS
-T, --tor Try to open all pages w/ Tor
Set the TOR_PROXY env variable to use
an address other than the default :9050
-r, --raw Print raw Gopher response only
-p, --print Print rendered Gopher response only
-l, --local Connect to 127.0.0.1:7070
--emoji Show TLS/Tor status as emoji.
-h, --help Show this screen
-v, --version Show phetch version
Once you've launched phetch, use `ctrl-h` to view the on-line help.Until now there have been no option collisions, but now we have the letter T, that means one thing in lower case and another thing in upper case, even when the total amount of options are very small compared to programs like curl or ls.
One way could be to eliminate the short option, e.g. so that --tor doesn't have a short option. Another way could be to use another ‘significant’ letter than the first:
-t, --tls Try to open all pages w/ TLS
-o, --tor Try to open all pages w/ Tor
The latter approach can be seen in ls(1):
-F, --classify append indicator (one of */=>@|) to entries
However, care also have to taken to provide options for negating an option set in the configuration file. What if phetch.conf has
# Always use TOR to connect to sites
tor yesand we want to connect to a site without using TOR? For this scenario we need to be able to override the values set in the configuration file. Some programs, e.g. ls uses -X, --no-x, where the uppercase shortcut is taken to mean ‘no’:
-G, --no-group in a long listing, don't print group names
I find this approach easy to remember.
Here's a suggestion:
$ phetch --help
Usage: phetch [OPTIONS] [URL]
positional arguments:
URL Optional gopher URL
optional arguments:
-h, --help Show this help message and exit
-v, --version Show version information and exit
-t, --tls Try to open all pages w/TLS
-T, --no-tls Do not use TLS
-o, --tor Try to open all pages w/TOR
-O, --no-tor Do not use TOR
-e, --emoji Show TLS/TOR status as emoji
-E, --no-emoji I do not care about emoji
-r, --raw Print raw Gopher response only
-p, --print Print rendered Gopher response only
-l, --local Connect to 127.0.0.1:7070
Commandline options always override options set in phetch.conf.
Once you've launched phetch, use ‘Ctrl-h’ to view the on-line help.
And perhaps this would be nice to have, too:
-c CONFIG, --config=CONFIG
Use CONFIG instead of ~/.config/phetch.conf
-C, --no-config Ignore the default configuration file
PS: I chose -o, --tor because the sound T was already taken by -t, --tls. The following is another choice that should be easy to remember:
-s, --tls Try to open all pages w/TLS
-S, --no-tls Do not use TLS
-t, --tor Try to open all pages w/TOR
-T, --no-tor Do not use TOR
Where the mnemonic for the S sound could be “secure” or “gophers://” (imagined equivalent to “https://”).
You raise a number of good points. Thank you for writing this up!
Phetch now has so many commandline options and a configuration file
that I feel it's time to reflect on option names, shortcuts, and how
these interact with the configuration file.
To start, I agree there are too many options. I think I've gone a bit overboard and now is a good time to reign it in. I'd like to keep the number of command line options minimal and let the conf file be the way people actually customize their experience. So maybe the philosophy should be: only "operation mode" options are command line flags (like print/raw) and the rest go in phetch.conf. TLS and Tor deserve to be up there too, since TLS can be URL dependent and you may not always want to have Tor enabled.
I've removed the --emoji flag, it can just be in the config file along this line of thinking.
Until now there have been no option collisions, but now we have the
letter T, that means one thing in lower case and another thing in
upper case, even when the total amount of options are very small
compared to programs like curl or ls.
Yes, good call on this. I've changed it to -s/--tls for secure and -o/--tor for the onion router. Now no one gets to be -t!
Some programs, e.g. ls uses
-X,--no-x, where the uppercase
shortcut is taken to mean ‘no’...I find this approach easy to
remember.
I like this approach too. To try and keep things concise, I'm just going to advertise the S/O versions on --help.
And perhaps this would be nice to have, too:
-c CONFIG, --config=CONFIG
Use CONFIG instead of ~/.config/phetch.conf
-C, --no-config Ignore the default configuration file
Great! I added this along with the other changes and will release them in the next day or so.
Thank you again, this is very helpful.
phetch - quick lil gopher client (v0.1.13-dev - 2020-01-11)
Usage:
phetch [options] Launch phetch in interactive mode
phetch [options] [url] Open Gopher URL in interactive mode
Options:
-s, --tls Try to open Gopher URLs securely w/ TLS
-o, --tor Use local Tor proxy to open all pages
-S, -O Disable TLS or Tor
-r, --raw Print raw Gopher response only
-p, --print Print rendered Gopher response only
-l, --local Connect to 127.0.0.1:7070
-c, --config FILE Use instead of ~/.config/phetch/phetch.conf
-C, --no-config Don't use any config file
-h, --help Show this screen
-v, --version Show phetch version
Command line options always override options set in phetch.conf.
Once you've launched phetch, use `ctrl-h` to view the on-line help.
That's very nice. I like your choice of switches for TLS and TOR even better than my own.
This issue is closeable, don't you think?