[libvirt] Request to rename 'destroy' to something milder.

[Kashyap Chamarthy]

On 06/14/2011 09:59 PM, Eric Blake wrote:
> On 06/14/2011 04:31 AM, Kashyap Chamarthy wrote:
>> (please cc me in response as I have not subscribed to this list)
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> A minor nitpick:
>>
>> Every-time I suggest someone to do a force shut-down a guest using
>> 'virsh destroy foo' , the very first question I get is -- does it
>> _destroy_ my data?
>>
>> This causes confusion to the inexperienced user and makes him/her
>> suspect that the data/disk could be destroyed while running 'virsh
>> destroy foo'
>>
>> Maybe replacing it to a milder name like 'poweroff' or something might
>> help?
>
> I don't know how successful you'll be at this.

I just brought this up because more and more admins ask me what exactly is virsh trying to 
'destroy' -- up until it's clarified. I understand this is nothing major, but a 
usability/getting-used-to thing. So, I'm not holding my breath here.

I recall asking at one
> point in the past about adding 'nodedev-detach' as an alias for
> 'nodedev-dettach' to fix the spelling error (but I can't find it in the
> mail archives, so it was probably a question I asked on IRC).  My
> recollection of the response is:
>
> 1. any client that cares about maximum portability will use the older
> spelling, not the newer one, so adding won't help portable scripts.

True. As even my local shell scripts are used to the 'destroy' cmd now
>
> 2. adding an alias means that the user writing a new script has to read
> the documentation to see which of the two commands they want to use,
> whereas offering only one spelling makes the decision easier.
>
> 3. while we may mark old spellings as deprecated, we have no plans to
> remove them at any point (not even for a major number bump); backwards
> compatibility demands that we keep everything we ever add, and adding
> aliases adds that much more to maintain (although the maintenance burden
> of an alias is lighter than the burden for a new API).
>
> I'm personally in favor of the idea of adding better-named aliases, so
> I'm not the person to convince.  For this idea to work, you'll need
> buy-in from the Daniels (DV and danpb).  And we _do_ have at least one
> example of an alias: 'virsh quit' and 'virsh exit' are aliases.

Thanks Eric for mentioning these.


-- 
/kashyap