cc'ing Sankar and Lidia.
I know Lidia used the --echo option in v2.
Please comment in how you'd like to see the output format of --echo option.
Bill, more questions. Your proposal of the output format:
$ asadmin --echo version
asadmin program options: --host localhost --port 4848 --terse false
--interactive true --secure false --echo false
command: version --verbose false
Does this also include the environment variables?
Also, is it possible to not print out "asadmin <generic options>" in
multimode while in singlemode print out "asadmin <generico-option>" if
--echo=true?
Bill Shannon wrote:
> Jane Young wrote on 8/10/09 6:43 PM:
>
>> 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.
>>
>
> If we gave them another way to do this, would that be sufficient?
>
>
>> 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.
>>
>
> Right, they're different.
>
>
>>>> 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 ?
>>
>
> No. You can use the deprecated syntax to override the program
> options on a per-command basis, but the assumption is that generally
> all the commands in a multimode script are going to apply to the
> same server with the same options, so you'll specify those when you
> start multimode and then won't need to specify them on each command.
> But for compatibility, the old way is still supported.
>
> Note that you can also change the values using the export command
> while in multimode.
>
>
>> 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.
>>
>
> Are there SQE people on this alias? If not, who should I check with?
>
>
>>>> 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".
>>
>
> I think the command would only print out the defaults, well, really,
> the effective values, for all the asadmin program options. It wouldn't
> do anything with the per-command options. (Need a better name than
> "defaults" for the command.)
>
> Perhaps a "setoptions" command to set any of the asadmin options
> and a "getoptions" command to list the defaults:
>
> $ asadmin
> asadmin> getoptions
> --host localhost --port 4848 --secure false --user anonymous ...
> asadmin> setoptions --host myserver.com
>
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