[Pulp-list] CLI Argument Conventions

[Jay Dobies]

In the v2 CLI we're working for more consistency across the sections. 
Part of that is done through the prompt's render_* calls.

I added a module under pulp.gc_client.util called arg_utils. It should 
be used when handling user-supplied options to make sure we handle 
things consistently across the board. It has three calls so far:


convert_removed_options
   Updating metadata, like configuration on a repo, is a pain because we 
need to differentiate between the user removing an option and a user not 
indicating to change one. The convention has been that specifying "" as 
the value (or omitting it entirely) indicates to remove a config option 
entirely. For instance: --verify_checksum=""

   This call should be run on user-supplied arguments in any CLI update 
call to ensure that any None values populated by the CLI framework are 
removed (they represent the user not specifying to change a value) and 
will convert empty strings to Nones (to indicate the user is explicitly 
saying to set the value to none/remove it). It will modify the passed in 
dict in place.

convert_boolean_args
   This call takes a dict and a list of keys it should parse as 
booleans. It will apply the CLI-wide convention for specifying booleans 
(that way we're not mixing and matching some true/false, some 1/0) and 
update the passed in dict with a boolean instead of a string. An 
exception with a user-friendly message in its first arg is raised if the 
parsing fails.

convert_file_contents
   Similar to the boolean call, it takes a dict and a list of keys in it 
that represent files on disk. It reads in the contents of the files and 
replaces the filename in the dict with the contents, meant to be used 
for small files like certificates and gpg keys. Again, if the file can't 
be read it will raise an exception with a standard, already i18n-ified 
message.


If you've written a CLI call that was handling any of these cases, 
please take a few minutes to update them to these calls instead. I have 
one last piece to add for this to have the client exception middleware 
handle the possible exceptions raised by these calls and display the 
error automatically so the extension writer doesn't have to.

-- 
Jay Dobies
Freenode: jdob @ #pulp
http://pulpproject.org | http://blog.pulpproject.org