`suspenders help` should provide actual help ...not generate an app...

[lorenrogers]

Just made this mistake, expecting help. If the app is actually called "help", there should probably be a --name option or something.

[tute]

:+1: thanks for your suggestion!

[zamith]

You can get the help "page" by running suspenders --help, I don't think there is any reason to expect suspenders help to open it as well. If we do want that, then probably moving to a rails like interface of suspenders new app_name is a first step.

One thing we can do regardless, is showing the help "page" when we run suspenders without any arguments as the current "No value provided for required arguments 'app_path'" is not very helpful.

What do you think?

[lorenrogers]

I agree that the new namespace would be nice. Probably a good long-term solution.

For the specific case I ran into, a short-term solution could be to have a confirmation prompt before creating the new app. E.g:

Suspenders help can be found with 'suspenders --help'
Would you like to continue creating a new app named "help"? [y,N]

Yes the help page should probably show when no arguments are passed. (Somewhat separate issue though?)

[zamith]

Suspenders actively avoids prompting the user, so that I'm afraid would not be a possible solution.

Anything else is up for discussion, I think. On Mon, 14 Mar 2016 at 20:57, Loren Rogers notifications@github.com wrote:

I agree that the new namespace would be nice. Probably a good long-term solution.

For the specific case I ran into, a short-term solution could be to have a confirmation prompt before creating the new app. E.g:

Suspenders help can be found with 'suspenders --help' Would you like to continue creating a new app named "help"? [y,N]

Yes the help page should probably show when no arguments are passed. (Somewhat separate issue though?)

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/thoughtbot/suspenders/issues/730#issuecomment-196518089 .

[tute]

You can get the help "page" by running suspenders --help, I don't think there is any reason to expect suspenders help to open it as well. If we do want that, then probably moving to a rails like interface of suspenders new app_name is a first step.

:+1:

One thing we can do regardless, is showing the help "page" when we run suspenders without any arguments as the current "No value provided for required arguments 'app_path'" is not very helpful. What do you think?

I like this. Will appreciate @mike-burns input: is this expected command-line utility behavior?

For the specific case I ran into, a short-term solution could be to have a confirmation prompt before creating the new app.

@lorentrogers what are other utilities that have the help option output a help page?

[mike-burns]

Doing something useful when run with no arguments seems nice. Showing --help then might be a good idea.

[lorenrogers]

Here's an example of how it was solved in https://pragprog.com/book/dccar/build-awesome-command-line-applications-in-ruby

[lorenrogers]

All these produce the same help info:

rails help
rails -h
rails --help

I believe this is a documented design pattern for command line apps, but I can't seem to find the ref for it. I'll post when I come across more concrete info.

[mike-burns]

~% ls help
colorls: help: No such file or directory
~% ls -h
some-file
~% ls --help
colorls: unknown option -- -
usage: colorls [-1AaCcdFfGgHhikLlmnopqRrSsTtux] [file ...]

[mike-burns]

It may or may not be documented, but it is NOT how unix commands work. Let's instead focus on making suspenders usable. Do you need help with your pull request?

[lorenrogers]

Interesting! You're 100% right that it's not a UNIX pattern -- I wouldn't expect things like cd, ls, or cat to respond to a help command. Seems like it's pretty common in ruby gems though? E.g. Bitters supports it:

bitters help
Commands:
bitters help [COMMAND]  # Describe available commands or one specific command
bitters install         # Install Bitters into your project
bitters remove          # Remove Bitters
bitters reset           # Reset Bitters
bitters version         # Show Bitters version

I assume that this is because they're not documented with man? Is there a common understanding around when the different options are used?

[mike-burns]

Long-term, we're hoping to drop the command-line aspect of suspenders -- see #676 for what we're trying to get working.

I'd rather concentrate on better output on ARGV.empty? and on #676 than on re-arranging the arguments for the existing command. You'll want to focus on bin/suspenders for your patch, I suspect.

[lorenrogers]

Aah - makes sense. I'll put together a PR with just the ARGV.empty? output updated.

Out of curiosity, is there a standard set of guidelines for designing ruby cli apps? I've been looking through that Copeland book -- is there a better resource for this?