[Assword] Proposal for an extensible command line syntax

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor]

On 10/23/2013 07:17 PM, Olivier Guerrier wrote:

> Please find below a proposal to change to command line syntax of
> assword. I've tried to keep as much as possible from the existing, But
> there is no full backward compatibility.
> 
> The mid-term idea is to extend the features of assword, but this can't
> be done without adding more options and command keywords.

i'm not sure i understand what we gain from this UI reorganization on
its own.  it sounds like you are motivated by some larger goal, and you
think this is a step on the way to that goal.  but the goal itself is
unclear to me.

perhaps if you explained the larger goal, we could see if there is a way
to get there without breaking backward compatibility, or we could better
understand the reason for your proposed changes.

> There are several possibles input sources for configuration, here is the
> priority order, from highest to lowest:
> 1 - command line (top priority, always taken into account)
> 2 - environnement variables
> 3 - configuration file
> 4 - default internal values
> 
> naming convention:
> 
> - command line's keywords will be always lower case, only one word, no
>   underscore
> - configuration file's keyword will be the sames as the command line
> - environnement variables will be uppercase and prefixed with ASSWORD_
> 
> fe: --keyfile : keyfile= : ASSWORD_KEYFILE=

I like this idea of consistent convention even though i personally
dislike the --longarg UI conventions when environment variables and
subcommand syntax seem cleaner to me.

can you give an example of what specific commands would work under your
proposed changes that wouldn't work under the old situation?  (i.e. what
new features are you proposing?)  And what existing commands would not
work under the changes you're proposing (i.e. what
backward-compatibility breakage do you forsee?)

Regards,

	--dkg

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