See comments below:
Bill Shannon wrote:
> kedar wrote on 8/10/09 3:53 PM:
>
>> Bill Shannon wrote:
>>
>>> Can someone help me understand the background and use of the --echo
>>> option to asadmin?
>>>
>>> At a very simple level this seemed to me to be like "sh -x", simply
>>> echoing each command as its executed. This would be useful "asadmin
>>> scripts" run in multimode, for instance.
>>>
>>> In v2, the --echo option would echo more than just the original command.
>>> It would also echo most (all?) of the settings of the other asadmin
>>> options, such as --interactive, --secure, --terse, etc. I've copied
>>> that behavior in v3.
>>>
>>> However, this produces echo output that uses the old deprecated command
>>> syntax, for example:
>>>
>>> $ asadmin --echo --terse version
>>> version --host localhost --port 4848 --interactive=true --echo=true
>>> --terse=true
>>> ...
>>>
>>> changing that output to put the asadmin options first would be weird
>>> unless it also included the word "asadmin", e.g.
>>>
>>> asadmin --host localhost --port 4848 --interactive=true --echo=true
>>> --terse=true
>>> version
>>>
>>> That would be fine except when the commands are being executed in a
>>> multimode script (which seems to me like the primary use case).
>>>
>>> So, my question is, how important is it that --echo include values for
>>> asadmin options that have not been specified? Would it be sufficient
>>> if asadmin simply echoed the commands *as entered*?
>>>
>> I don't know the history too well, but ...
>> I have routinely used the --echo flag to see the default values of certain
>> options. So, from that angle, it's useful that it echoes not only those
>> options
>> that users specified on the command line. This was compounded by the
>> fact that
>> some options may come from the environment variables. echo used to treat
>> them
>> all and produce an output that used to tell the user what the final
>> command line
>> looks like, which is sometimes useful.
>>
>
> That almost sounds like a "debugging" option. Or, if --terse=false
> wasn't the default, that might be more like a "verbose" option.
>
The --echo option has been there since I started working on CLI (7-8
years ago). The --echo option can be used as debugging purposes. I
know SQE uses this option to check the default option values and the
environment variables.
AFAIK, --echo is not the same as --terse (verbose) option. The --terse
option prints out the messages from stacktrace. This option is mostly
used for scripting.
>
>> With echo now being an asadmin program option, I see that the situation
>> gets
>> trickier and we can make a case that we change the behavior of echo
>> slightly, to
>> echo only the given (and maybe default) "command options" along with
>> program options. How about for example,
>>
>> $ asadmin --echo version
>> asadmin program options: --host localhost --port 4848 --terse false
>> --interactive true --secure false --echo false
>> command: version --verbose false
>>
>
> So there would be two lines of output for each command?
> Do you think anyone depends on the output format?
> I hope not.
>
>
I have a question. You said that it's weird in multimode to print out
"asadmin" in the echo. So how does a user enter the generic options
using multimode?
e.g.
asadmin>--host localhost --port 4848 version ?
I think printing out the command in the format as they are executed is
beneficial for those who like to copy/paste the command. Maybe SQE team
can give some inputs here.
>> Also, note that we should be consistent in the display. For example, in
>> your
>> example, not all options and their values are separated by an '=' or '
>> '. We
>> need to pick one.
>>
>
> I think I used =true/false for boolean options, mostly because I think
> it's weird that that boolean options have an *optional* value, and
> because I thought most people used that form when typing them.
>
> If you want consistency, I would leave out the "=" from all of them.
>
>
>> If this makes it complex, maybe we should add a command named "defaults"
>> that
>> shows the default values of asadmin program options and then we have to do
>> none of this and just echo the given command line verbatim?
>>
>
> It would be very easy to add such a command. Note also that the "export"
> command with no arguments will give you much of this, showing you which
> program options have been set; try it.
>
>
export command prints out the environment variables in multimode. The
problem with "defaults" command is that not all defaults are the same.
For example:
the default value of type option for generate-jvm-report command is
"summary" but for create-services is "das".
>> If you are worried about multimode, I think Byron has added a capability
>> where
>> asadmin logs all the commands in an asadmin "session" to a file for
>> subsequent
>> analysis of an asadmin run. Maybe we should document it more clearly?
>>
>
> Yes, that's useful for debugging. I'm not sure if it's documented at all.
>
>
> Opinions from anyone else?
>
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