Background

I am designing a CLI for a container build tool I am making. It uses Gentoo’s Portage behind the scenes

Question

I want to give the user the ability to specify a custom package repository. The repository must have a name, URI and sync type.

custom_repo: {
    uri: 'https://...',
    name: 'custom',
    sync_type: 'git',
}

How do I have the user represent this in the CLI? keep in mind, this is not the main input and is optional.

One way is to make this only provide-able via a config file using JSON or another structured data representation. But I want to see if theres a good way to do it in the CLI

What I am thinking of: command --custom-repo uri='https://...',name=custom,sync_type=git --custom-repo ... [main input]

Is this the best way of doing this?

  • Chris@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    Just pass in the name of a json file as a CLI input (or default the name and act on it if present or use it if indicated [e.g. /U == use json.config]).

    • matcha_addict@lemy.lolOP
      1·
      9 months ago

      I will definitely make that an option, but I would still want it to be invokable via CLI only if the user chooses. It makes scripting easier sometimes.

  • notabot@lemm.ee
    1·
    9 months ago

    For something like that i’d take a parameter like this (repeated as necessary):

    --custom-repo==+

    for example:

    --custom-repo=custom=git+https://github.com/matcha/custom

    • Corngood@lemmy.ml
      1·
      9 months ago

      Nix does something like this with the protocol specifier: e.g. git+https://...

      I’m not sure what name means here exactly, but it might make sense to treat that separately, like git remotes:

      tool add [name] git+https://foo

        • Oscar@programming.devEnglish
          0·
          9 months ago

          Ok, then I don’t understand at all. What happens if I host my git project on https://myawesomeproject.dev/? How can the application infer anything by this URL?

            • Oscar@programming.devEnglish
              1·
              9 months ago

              But you can’t assume that it follows the github format of https:////.git. In my example, I meant that you would just use that url to clone it:

              git clone https://myawesomeproject.dev

              One real-world example of this is ziglings.org (though it’s technically just a redirect).