Re: [atomic-devel] [Container-tools] AtomicApp/Nulecule Design and Workflow

[Daniel J Walsh <dwalsh redhat com>]

On 11/22/2015 11:09 AM, Brian (bex) Exelbierd wrote:
>> On Nov 13, 2015, at 7:19 PM, Charlie Drage <cdrage redhat com> wrote:
>>
>> Personally I'm on the fence on whether or not we should have two
>> different CLI's, however, as Dan Walsh pointed out. It's confusing
>> having two similarly named CLIs.
>>
>> However... we should still keep the projects separate and rather
>> "bridge" the two together by passing / using the atomicapp container.
>> This coincides to Dusty's slides about how we could possibly add:
>> 'atomic exe --label=unpack <image> COMMANDS' through a PR to atomic.
>>
>> Currently we have to pass in --opt3 variables in order for params such
>> as '--provider=docker' and  '--answers=/tmp/answers' to be used correctly. We
>> could fix this atomicapp side by adding non-ordered arguments
>> so they may be passed anywhere in the command line. 
>
> Could the Atomic CLI make this easier by changing the way it parses arguments and manages labels?
>
> Warning, immature ideas follow.
>
> 1) `atomic XXX ...` just looks for a label called XXX and runs it.  That way arbitrary verbs are possible, when needed.  Standards and linters should help keep things clean.
My problem with this is how would the user discover the verbs.  We want
to tell the user one way to install all applications,  The information
on how to use an app should
be inside the app image.  If we have to tell the user go to this web
site and cut and paste a command like atomic foobar -xyz  Then we have
failed.

If we want to have a new command in atomic CLI, then lets add it and
justify it.
>
> 2) Could argument parsing in Atomic CLI be made more flexible than the current OPT system?  Could the parser learn how to manage arguments like this:
>
> RUN: docker run -it $foo $bar:o container command $destination $*
>
> This is an attempt to specify the following substitutions:
>
> $foo = whatever the entirety of a --foo== or -foo= or -foo or --foo - required
> $bar = the same as $foo for s/foo/bar/ but optional
> $destination = same as $foo above with s/foo/destination/
> $* anything left over
>
> This fixes positional problems, add some error output, etc.
I would prefer to see a real world examples.  We now allow environment
variables to be passed and we have --opt1, --opt2, --opt3  Not sure
what we can't do now, that you want added.

> regards,
>
> bex