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Nothing beats a good CLI with a proper man page in my book. I like having all the power at my fingertips, and a good way to search for what I want to do without

Nothing beats a good CLI with a proper man page in my book. I like having all the power at my fingertips, and a good way to search for what I want to do without using the internet.

tonyedgecombe 7y ago
rsync is one of those tools that I use so infrequently that I’d rather have a good GUI than have to relearn the command switches every time I use it.
- zarathustraa 7y ago
  What? Nothing like 10 minutes of scrolling with the keyboard through man to avoid 5 seconds of mouse clicking in a GUI. Only unproductive amateurs use the mouse...
- SkyMarshal 7y ago
  Or just script it, include good comments explaining why you used all the switches you used, and back up the scripts to your favorite backup service. Available everywhere and explained well so you don't forget why you choose the switches you did.
  - dvtrn 7y ago
    Good suggestion here. I created a single serving Ansible docker image with a couple of playbooks for this very purpose --devs were asking frequently to pull schemas or dump from various data sources internally "Hey I forgot the command to do this, what was it again?". Eventually I gave them a Dockerfile, wrote up some documentation on how to change hosts in the run command if they so desired, questions all but stopped immediately, and the devs loved it. I now get a new question "hey, can you make one of those but to do this?" "Sure, here's a playbook for it, put this in that directory on your local machine and it'll be available in the container". Combined with dynamic host inventories, it's made me a few friends lol
  - mixmastamyk 7y ago
    And in the scripts, use the long-form flags, so many comments are unnecessary.
- floatboth 7y ago
  Yeah. Though rsync is not the most option-rich program ever. What really needs GUI is... ffmpeg! :)
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    There are lots and lots of ffmpeg GUIs, the problem is that IMO, all of them are either (1) not powerful enough or (2) more difficult to use than just the command line. The first problem may, of course, be a non-issue depending on what you need to do.
    - gmfawcett 7y ago
      Someone with a sufficient itch (and some Elisp skills) could probably do for ffmpeg what the Magit team did for Git. Git's another program with a litany of options, and Magit does an outstanding job of covering them with an easy-to-use interface. https://magit.vc/manual/magit/ https://magit.vc/manual/magit/ Admittedly the ffmpeg bar is probably higher, esp. given that ffmpeg can be configured and built a couple dozen different ways.
    - marcosdumay 7y ago
      Handbreak is a really good GUI for ffmpeg. The problem is that i (with its ~20 different windows) supports only one use case of the tool.
    - aidenn0 7y ago
      I'd love to just make a GUI for generating ffmpeg filter graphs. The MS SDK had a directshow filter graph editor (graphedit i think it was called?) that was quite pleasant to use back in the day.
  - Fnoord 7y ago
    ffmpeg needs a GUI? Nah, you just make aliases or script it as this comment already described for Rsync [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20393620 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20393620
jimmaswell 7y ago
I always end up having to google how to do stuff with CLI tools but GUIs let you discover how to do things intuitively. Tried using man pages but they're always slower to find stuff in and a stackoverflow answer is more likely to target the use case I'm going for.
- cyc115 7y ago
  not super relevant here, but for those interested. There is a cli tool called `tldr` that takes in the name (of a tool) and prints out common usages.
  - darkpuma 7y ago
    I'm a big fan of this. Probably 90% of the time the tldr summary has my use-case covered.
    - Fnoord 7y ago
      If the tldr entry exists. Obscure commands don't have one while you're less likely to know these well. Chicken/egg problem.
      - darkpuma 7y ago
        In my experience the coverage is shockingly good. And if you find a case where there is no tldr, you're back where you're started having lost not more than five seconds. The failure case is graceful, so it was easy to put tldr into my workflow.
        weaksauce 7y ago
        I wonder if tldr returns a meaningful exit value that you could write an alias/function for something like tldr $term || man $term
        darkpuma 7y ago
rgoulter 7y ago
"proper" man page is quite the qualifier. (Edit: as in, I know I'm "supposed" to use man pages, but it's almost easier to google for it. The man pages I've seen aren't as easy to use for common cases). CLIs are much more limited at discoverability compared to a graphical interface (TUI/GUI) which can show you all the options and let the user directly interact.
- nixpulvis 7y ago
  Install `tldr`.
todd8 7y ago
When reading a man page, especially a classic man page like the ps man page or maybe a system call man page like sigaction, I try to keep in mind that the information is there but may require careful study. Good man pages are a often quite terse, requiring attentive reading. I like using man the best, but there are two other methods that command-line programs can use to provide documentation, GNU's info and built in help (triggered by -h or --help on command-line). GNU's info works better than man for more complex documentation--its practically a curses based e-book reader. For a taste of using info based documentation, try info spell on the command line to see the documentation for the aspell command. Info is even used as the internal help documentation for Emacs, reachable from inside of Emacs (via "Cntl-h i", naturally). I think rsync has too many facets for a man page and would benefit from having a longer info file that could explain the many use cases for rsync.
- nixpulvis 7y ago
  I also like `tldr <command>` if a cached version of the internet's advice is needed. Last resort is Google.
c-smile 7y ago
That depends. Applications that have occasionally used UI MUST BE self descriptive. Their functionality MUST BE consumable without need of reading man pages. Otherwise they will have very few users. Computer is for human, but not human is for computer. As its configurational appendage.

Nothing beats a good CLI with a proper man page in my book. I like having all the power at my fingertips, and a good way to search for what I want to do without using the internet.

tonyedgecombe 7y ago

rsync is one of those tools that I use so infrequently that I’d rather have a good GUI than have to relearn the command switches every time I use it.

zarathustraa 7y ago
What? Nothing like 10 minutes of scrolling with the keyboard through man to avoid 5 seconds of mouse clicking in a GUI. Only unproductive amateurs use the mouse...
SkyMarshal 7y ago
Or just script it, include good comments explaining why you used all the switches you used, and back up the scripts to your favorite backup service. Available everywhere and explained well so you don't forget why you choose the switches you did.
- dvtrn 7y ago
  Good suggestion here. I created a single serving Ansible docker image with a couple of playbooks for this very purpose --devs were asking frequently to pull schemas or dump from various data sources internally "Hey I forgot the command to do this, what was it again?". Eventually I gave them a Dockerfile, wrote up some documentation on how to change hosts in the run command if they so desired, questions all but stopped immediately, and the devs loved it. I now get a new question "hey, can you make one of those but to do this?" "Sure, here's a playbook for it, put this in that directory on your local machine and it'll be available in the container". Combined with dynamic host inventories, it's made me a few friends lol
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  And in the scripts, use the long-form flags, so many comments are unnecessary.
floatboth 7y ago
Yeah. Though rsync is not the most option-rich program ever. What really needs GUI is... ffmpeg! :)
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  There are lots and lots of ffmpeg GUIs, the problem is that IMO, all of them are either (1) not powerful enough or (2) more difficult to use than just the command line. The first problem may, of course, be a non-issue depending on what you need to do.
  - gmfawcett 7y ago
    Someone with a sufficient itch (and some Elisp skills) could probably do for ffmpeg what the Magit team did for Git. Git's another program with a litany of options, and Magit does an outstanding job of covering them with an easy-to-use interface. https://magit.vc/manual/magit/ https://magit.vc/manual/magit/ Admittedly the ffmpeg bar is probably higher, esp. given that ffmpeg can be configured and built a couple dozen different ways.
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
    Handbreak is a really good GUI for ffmpeg. The problem is that i (with its ~20 different windows) supports only one use case of the tool.
  - aidenn0 7y ago
    I'd love to just make a GUI for generating ffmpeg filter graphs. The MS SDK had a directshow filter graph editor (graphedit i think it was called?) that was quite pleasant to use back in the day.
- Fnoord 7y ago
  ffmpeg needs a GUI? Nah, you just make aliases or script it as this comment already described for Rsync [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20393620 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20393620

jimmaswell 7y ago

I always end up having to google how to do stuff with CLI tools but GUIs let you discover how to do things intuitively. Tried using man pages but they're always slower to find stuff in and a stackoverflow answer is more likely to target the use case I'm going for.

cyc115 7y ago
not super relevant here, but for those interested. There is a cli tool called `tldr` that takes in the name (of a tool) and prints out common usages.
- darkpuma 7y ago
  I'm a big fan of this. Probably 90% of the time the tldr summary has my use-case covered.
  - Fnoord 7y ago
    If the tldr entry exists. Obscure commands don't have one while you're less likely to know these well. Chicken/egg problem.
    - darkpuma 7y ago
      In my experience the coverage is shockingly good. And if you find a case where there is no tldr, you're back where you're started having lost not more than five seconds. The failure case is graceful, so it was easy to put tldr into my workflow.
      - weaksauce 7y ago
        I wonder if tldr returns a meaningful exit value that you could write an alias/function for something like tldr $term || man $term
        darkpuma 7y ago

rgoulter 7y ago

"proper" man page is quite the qualifier. (Edit: as in, I know I'm "supposed" to use man pages, but it's almost easier to google for it. The man pages I've seen aren't as easy to use for common cases). CLIs are much more limited at discoverability compared to a graphical interface (TUI/GUI) which can show you all the options and let the user directly interact.

nixpulvis 7y ago
Install `tldr`.

todd8 7y ago

When reading a man page, especially a classic man page like the ps man page or maybe a system call man page like sigaction, I try to keep in mind that the information is there but may require careful study. Good man pages are a often quite terse, requiring attentive reading. I like using man the best, but there are two other methods that command-line programs can use to provide documentation, GNU's info and built in help (triggered by -h or --help on command-line). GNU's info works better than man for more complex documentation--its practically a curses based e-book reader. For a taste of using info based documentation, try info spell on the command line to see the documentation for the aspell command. Info is even used as the internal help documentation for Emacs, reachable from inside of Emacs (via "Cntl-h i", naturally). I think rsync has too many facets for a man page and would benefit from having a longer info file that could explain the many use cases for rsync.

nixpulvis 7y ago
I also like `tldr <command>` if a cached version of the internet's advice is needed. Last resort is Google.

c-smile 7y ago

That depends. Applications that have occasionally used UI MUST BE self descriptive. Their functionality MUST BE consumable without need of reading man pages. Otherwise they will have very few users. Computer is for human, but not human is for computer. As its configurational appendage.