Re: [atomic-devel] Generic executable labels for atomic cli

[Daniel J Walsh <dwalsh redhat com>]

On 10/10/2015 09:03 AM, Dusty Mabe wrote:
>
>
> On 10/10/2015 06:57 AM, Daniel J Walsh wrote:
>>
>> On 10/07/2015 12:24 PM, Dusty Mabe wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> In the container-tools team we have been having discussions about the
>>> lifecycle of an atomicapp. We have essentially decided that there are
>>> more verbs that we want to use than those that are defined in the
>>> Generic
>>> Labels [1]. Vasek has proposed an idea [2] that I think would be useful
>>> for atomic cli to support.
>>>
>>> The idea is more or less to support an application developer being
>>> able to define his/her own verbs to allow the user to call from atomic
>>> CLI. Since it is up to the application to define them they don't have
>>> to make sense in any other application. The application could still
>>> implement INSTALL/RUN/UNINSTALL etc, but they could define more that
>>> would enable them to provide a better user experience.
>>>
>>> In Vasek's suggestion he proposed that the
>>> io.projectatomic.atomic.cmd.unpack=.*
>>> label would correspond to `atomic unpack`. I would prefer that the
>>> label scheme (whatever it is) actually map to a top level primitive in
>>> atomic cli so that the user knows what he/she is doing. For example,
>>> rather than `atomic unpack <appname>` it would map to `atomic
>>> exelabel unpack <appname>`
>>> or `atomic runlabel unpack <appname>`.
>>>
>>> Regardless of the specific implementation, which can be decided later,
>>> I think a mechanism for arbitrary run labels would be useful. I can
>>> propose this to [1] and eventually send a PR to atomic cli if this is
>>> useful.
>>>
>>> - Dusty
>>>
>>> [1] -
>>> https://github.com/projectatomic/ContainerApplicationGenericLabels
>>> [2] -
>>> https://gist.github.com/goern/d8910ba7a10ff26bc8f2#gistcomment-1565065
>>>
>> Should their be a way to list these secondary labels?
>
> I think all labels are listed by the `atomic info <image>` command,
> right?
>
>
Yes,  But these labels have special meaning.  I think the atomic help is
probably the best way to go.
>>  
>> Should we define a hierarchy of labels?  How does the user discover this
>> label?
>
> I hadn't given much thought to a hierarchy. Can you think of a case it
> would be useful?
>
>
I am not sure of what I meant by hierarchy. :^(
>>
>> Should we have a atomic help which could read a label to describe this
>> advanced behaviour?
>
> We could have `atomic help <imagename>` which just executes a label
> that produces some usage/help text for a particular image. This help
> text, which is defined by the producer of the image, could explain
> what labels exist and how to use them.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Dusty
>
It would be nice if atomic could figure out a default help message if
the developer did not provide text.

Something like

atomic help foobar

Execute

atomic install foobar

To install the image.  atomic will execute:

docker run ....

command.