Better flags

[greenled]

Flags should have a complete and a short form, something like --action and -a. This would help using and particularly reading them. A command like this one:

./psu -a deploy -u admin -p password -l http://portainer.local -n mystack -c /path/to/docker-compose.yml -g /path/to/env_vars_file

could also look like this one:

./psu --action deploy --user admin --password password --instance http://portainer.local --stack mystack --compose-file /path/to/docker-compose.yml --env-file /path/to/env_vars_file

[tortuetorche]

Hi @greenled,

I've done some work on this issue, I'm going to share some code with you soon.
I think the action option should be an argument instead, like this:

psu deploy --user admin --password password --instance http://portainer.local --stack mystack --compose-file /path/to/docker-compose.yml --env-file /path/to/env_vars_file

Any thoughts/comments on this?

Have a good day,
Tortue Torche

[greenled]

Hi @tortuetorche. I'm glad to hear you are working on something new!
I agree the action should be an argument, but we should be careful with this change, as it would change the API in a way that could break some pipelines out there ;) I am setting some ground for these breaking changes (and more to come), see #9.

[greenled]

@tortuetorche see #12 for your action as an argument idea.

[tortuetorche]

Hi @greenled,

but we should be careful with this change, as it would change the API in a way that could break some pipelines out there ;)

I'm totally agree with you, I think we can have both, <action> as an argument and -a|--action as a deprecated option to keep backward compatibility.

[tortuetorche]

FYI, I just publish some work on my next branch of psu.
It's an alpha version, there is a lot of things to do and debug...

[tortuetorche]

Here the output of the psu help command, who list the flags and options:

Portainer Stack Utils, version 0.2.0-alpha.2

  Usage:
    psu <action> [options]

  Arguments:
    action                         The name of the action to execute (possible values: 'deploy', 'undeploy', 'list', 'info', 'services', 'tasks', 'tasks_healthy', 'containers', 'status', 'help', 'version')

  Options:
    -u, --user=USERNAME            Username
    -p, --password=PASSWORD        Password
    -l, --url=URL                  URL to Portainer
    -n, --name=STACK_NAME          Stack name
    -c, --compose-file=[FILE_PATH] Path to docker-compose file (required if action=deploy)
    -g, --env-file                 Path to file with environment variables to be used by the stack (only used when action=deploy or action=update)
    -e, --endpoint=[ENDPOINT_ID]   Which Docker endpoint to use. Defaults to 1
    -r, --prune                    Whether to prune unused containers or not. Defaults to false
    -T, --timeout=[NUMBER_SECONDS] Status timeout, number of seconds before thrown an error (only used when action=status). Defaults to 100
    -j, --detect-job=[true|false]  Auto detect services who are jobs. Defaults to true
    -S, --service[=SERVICE_NAME]   Service name
    -i, --insecure                 Skip the host's SSL certificate verification. Defaults to false
    -v, --verbose                  Increase the verbosity of messages. Defaults to false
    -d, --debug                    Print as much information as possible to help diagnosing a malfunction. Defaults to false
    -q, --quiet                    Display the minimum of information or nothing, UNIX/Linux friendly. Defaults to false
    -t, --strict                   Never updates an existent stack nor removes an unexistent one, and instead exits with an error. Defaults to false
    -h, --help                     Display this help message
    -V, --version                  Display the version of this program
    -s, --secure[=yes|no]          DEPRECATED: Use the --insecure option instead. Enable or disable the host's SSL certificate verification. Defaults to 'yes'
    -a, --action=[ACTION_NAME]     DEPRECATED: Use <action> argument instead. The name of the action to execute

  Help:
    You can deploy/update/undeploy/list... stacks in a Portainer instance easily with this tool!

What do you think about the name of these options?
I think it's 100% backward compatible with psu 0.1.0

[greenled]

They look good to me. And yes, so far it looks 100% backwards compatible. Nice job! I see you also changed the --secure flag to a --insecure flag without arguments, which is more intuitive.

[greenled]

This isue is being worked on in the several-changes branch. Should be closed once that branch is merged.