New feature for 1.26 (master), $(JUJU_HOME)/aliases

[Nate Finch]

I don't think cross platform support of the config file format justifies
the non-zero maintenance burden of the feature. Nor the non-zero
maintenance burden of all the features that will inevitably follow after
it, like the new --no-aliases flag, which is now cognitive overhead on
every single command and every single script file.

Also, I think Rick has it right - aliases mean users end up with different
experiences of the product. This happened to me all the time with bzr
plugins - first Martin would have to figure out what plugins I was using
and what format my repo was in, and then he could help me figure out what
I'd screwed up. ;)  And people using aliases often forget that the command
they type all the time is not actually built into the product. I can't tell
you how often I've had someone tell me to 'git co <something>' (which is a
common - but not universal - alias for git checkout).

If you really want to use aliases, bash aliases work nearly identically,
AFAICT, but with truly zero maintenance burden on core devs.  By adding
alias support to Juju, you're not only condoning aliases, you're
encouraging their use, and I think that's a bad idea.  If the UX of some of
our commands suck, we should fix that.  If our backwards compatibility
policy is preventing us from fixing that, then at least we know the true
cost of the policy - since most users in the wild are *not* going to be
using any aliases. We should be using Juju in the same way as our
less-experienced users, since all of our users will have to go through that
period. (I'll ignore for the moment that quickstart has the exact same
problem and is actually way more disruptive to the UX).

-Nate


On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 9:26 PM Tim Penhey <tim.penhey at canonical.com> wrote:

> Hi Wayne,
>
> While I can see your point of view, I do disagree.
>
> While it may be of no benefit to you, it doesn't mean that others will
> not find it useful.
>
> I believe it is useful to have one format to specify aliases, one that
> doesn't depend on the shell that you use.
>
> The overhead in complexity isn't really that much, and with the
> --no-alias option which is coming, it still provides a way to ensure
> vanilla behaviour.
>
>
> Tim
>
> On 27/10/15 04:03, Wayne Witzel wrote:
> > After looking at this and the code more, I find myself very against this
> > feature. This adds code to core that is performing a tasks that most
> > people already know is handled by their shell. Even our Windows users
> > can install PowerShell and have aliases for commands. This adds no
> > benefit to core, it adds more complexity, and attempts to perform a task
> > that is already well handled by the users shell. If anything, this itch
> > could be scratched by adding some contrib documentation about some of
> > your favourite and/or most used aliases.
> >
> > On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 10:51 AM, Wayne Witzel
> > <wayne.witzel at canonical.com <mailto:wayne.witzel at canonical.com>> wrote:
> >
> >     What is the advantage of this over using a standard alias in my
> >     shell profile?
> >
> >     On Fri, Oct 23, 2015 at 11:05 AM, Aaron Bentley
> >     <aaron.bentley at canonical.com <mailto:aaron.bentley at canonical.com>>
> >     wrote:
> >
> >         bzr has a similar feature, but the problem with such a feature
> >         is that
> >         it can break scripts that expect the normal behaviour.  That's
> >         why bzr
> >         provides a --no-aliases option, which all scripts calling bzr
> >         should use.
> >
> >         The same applies to Juju.  If "status" gets defaulted to "status
> >         --format=tabular", most of our test scripts will break.  This
> isn't
> >         likely to happen on our test machines, but could easily happen
> when
> >         devs run our test scripts.
> >
> >         Could you please provide a similar --no-aliases option for juju,
> so
> >         that we can ensure people don't break our scripts by specifying
> >         surprising defaults?
> >
> >         Thanks,
> >
> >         Aaron
> >
> >         On 2015-10-23 12:12 AM, Tim Penhey wrote:
> >         > Hi folks,
> >         >
> >         > I scratched a personal itch yesterday and added the ability for
> >         > users to specify their own aliases for juju commands.
> >         >
> >         > There are two primary use cases that I was trying to address.
> >         >
> >         > Firstly, the ability to specify default flags for commands:
> status
> >         > = status --format=tabular
> >         >
> >         > I could never remember the right environment variable to set to
> >         > get tabular by default.
> >         >
> >         > The second was to allow quicker iteration around playing with
> new
> >         > CLI structure.  As most people are aware, the 2.0 CLI is going
> to
> >         > be somewhat different to the current one, and I thought it
> >         would be
> >         > good to provide a way in which we could "test drive" the new
> CLI
> >         > with the existing codebase without having to actually code
> >         > anything.
> >         >
> >         > The aliases files lives in JUJU_HOME, and is a simple text
> file.
> >         > Each non blank line that doesn't start with a '#' is
> considered to
> >         > be an alias. The format is expected to be:
> >         >
> >         > <command> = <command> [<args>...]
> >         >
> >         > So we can do things like:
> >         >
> >         > # stat is like two whole letters shorter... stat = status
> >         > --format=tabular
> >         >
> >         > # list tests list-environments = system environments
> list-users =
> >         > user list
> >         >
> >         > and so on.
> >         >
> >         > Tim
> >         >
> >
> >         --
> >         Juju-dev mailing list
> >         Juju-dev at lists.ubuntu.com <mailto:Juju-dev at lists.ubuntu.com>
> >         Modify settings or unsubscribe at:
> >         https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/juju-dev
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >     --
> >     Wayne Witzel III
> >     wayne.witzel at canonical.com <mailto:wayne.witzel at canonical.com>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Wayne Witzel III
> > wayne.witzel at canonical.com <mailto:wayne.witzel at canonical.com>
> >
> >
>
>
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