[erlang-questions] rebar help COMMAND

[Tuncer Ayaz]

While I was drafting how to implement a more useful 'rebar help'
command which accepts an argument, I wondered how much interest there
is for such a feature. It is inspired by similar help commands in
other cli tools.

print common help string:
$ rebar help
$ rebar -h
$ rebar --help

print command specific help string for all plugins implementing the
given command:
$ rebar help compile
erlc_compiler:compile
On 'compile' rebar_erlc_compiler builds sources with the extensions
*.erl, *.yrl, *.xrl, <...> and accepts the following rebar.config
options:
erl_opts: [...]

plugin_2:compile
similar to above
...

I think such an enhancement can improve the discoverability of rebar
commands and supported options quite a lot.

Is there enough interest that I should try to get this into the next
release?
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[Loïc Hoguin]

On 11/12/2012 04:40 PM, Tuncer Ayaz wrote:
> Is there enough interest that I should try to get this into the next
> release?

Yes. You shouldn't need to ask this. Rebar is too opaque today for
people to figure out all the things you can do with it without looking
at the source or cruising the web looking for the info. That needs fixing.

--
Loïc Hoguin
Erlang Cowboy
Nine Nines
http://ninenines.eu

[Tim Watson]

It would help plugin authors a lot if this behaviour was implemented in terms of reading some module metadata rather than being fixed to a subset of internal modules only. If that is something you'd consider.

Sent from my iPhone.

[Adam Rutkowski]

+1

--
Adam

[Kunthar]

+1

[Tuncer Ayaz]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 9:38 AM, Tim Watson wrote:
> It would help plugin authors a lot if this behaviour was implemented
> in terms of reading some module metadata rather than being fixed to
> a subset of internal modules only. If that is something you'd
> consider.

That's actually pretty much what the current draft looks like.
FYI, there's an ongoing discussion on the rebar list concerning
implementation details.

Thanks everybody for the feedback.

> On 12 Nov 2012, at 16:01, Loïc Hoguin wrote:
>
>> On 11/12/2012 04:40 PM, Tuncer Ayaz wrote:
>>> Is there enough interest that I should try to get this into the
>>> next release?
>>
>> Yes. You shouldn't need to ask this. Rebar is too opaque today for
>> people to figure out all the things you can do with it without
>> looking at the source or cruising the web looking for the info.
>> That needs fixing.