Opinions on CLI tools.

[Patrick Williams]

On Thu, Nov 03, 2016 at 09:00:28AM -0500, Andrew Geissler wrote:
> I still feel like we're doing a lot of "developer-biased" decision
> making here.  We're going to have people in the lab and other general
> users of obmc that shouldn't have to understand the details of our
> implementation of things like service states and such.

I don't think this is "developer-biased" as much as you are implying it
is.  There are two kinds of people...

    1) Person who has some familiarity with existing open source tools.
    2) Person who has no familiar with existing open source tools.

For person #1, if we document power-on is "systemctl start
host-power-on at 1.target" they have learned something about our system and
they might be able to learn more on their own through exploration.  If
we document power-on is "obmcutil power-on" we have taught them nothing.

For person #2, if we document power-on is "systemctl start
host-power-on at 1.target" they will copy and paste it into a terminal.  If
we document power-on is "obmcutil power-on" they will copy and paste it
into a terminal.

We haven't lost anything by not providing "obmcutil power-on" except 15
extra characters.  We have lost something by providing (and documenting)
"obmcutil power-on".

You use the term "developer-biased" but it is really "general Linux
knowledge" biased.  Person #2 doesn't have it and probably never will;
they are going to be a "copy and paste" user their whole life so why
cater to them?

-- 
Patrick Williams
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