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Maybe it's just me, but I find -- style flags that are actually commands to be extremely irritating. The new firewall-cmd system is an example of how obnoxious

Maybe it's just me, but I find -- style flags that are actually commands to be extremely irritating. The new firewall-cmd system is an example of how obnoxious this can be, where every operation requires arbitrary -- prefixes. While git has received a lot of well-deserved criticism for it's complexity, "git commit" is a lot better than "git --commit".

davexunit 12y ago
I knew someone would complain about the longopts shown in the slides. That was done to make it easier to understand. Normally, you'd just use the short flag, '-i' instead of '--install'. Also, in Guix, you would say 'guix package', not 'guix --package'. A full example would be 'guix package -i emacs', which looks fine to me.
- zimbatm 12y ago
  You're missing the point, it's not about the longopts. install is a command, not an option of a command.
  - davexunit 12y ago
    Install is not a command, it's a possible transaction type of 'guix package'. Since Guix is transactional, it's perfectly valid to install and remove software at the same time: guix package -i emacs -r zile
    - zimbatm 12y ago
      I suppose you could see it like that although I don't see the use of it. Why not just have straight-forward commands like `guix install` `guix uninstall` `guix search` `guix update`
      - dllthomas 12y ago
        It's going to be much easier to read something like the above, guix package -i emacs -r zile than your alternative: guix package install emacs remove zile Bear in mind that a transaction could get arbitrarily long.
        astrodust 12y ago
        "Much easier" obviously means something different for you. So many utilities have "-r" meaning "recursive", for example, so it requires a real mental shift to think of it in these terms. Describing transactions with arguments seems clunky at best.
        dllthomas 12y ago
        "Much easier" because you can quickly tell the difference between a package you're installing or removing, versus the action to be taken with the package - as opposed to a bunch of strings of the form [a-z0-9]+ that you can't scan and need to actually read.

davexunit 12y ago

I knew someone would complain about the longopts shown in the slides. That was done to make it easier to understand. Normally, you'd just use the short flag, '-i' instead of '--install'. Also, in Guix, you would say 'guix package', not 'guix --package'. A full example would be 'guix package -i emacs', which looks fine to me.

zimbatm 12y ago
You're missing the point, it's not about the longopts. install is a command, not an option of a command.
- davexunit 12y ago
  Install is not a command, it's a possible transaction type of 'guix package'. Since Guix is transactional, it's perfectly valid to install and remove software at the same time: guix package -i emacs -r zile
  - zimbatm 12y ago
    I suppose you could see it like that although I don't see the use of it. Why not just have straight-forward commands like `guix install` `guix uninstall` `guix search` `guix update`
    - dllthomas 12y ago
      It's going to be much easier to read something like the above, guix package -i emacs -r zile than your alternative: guix package install emacs remove zile Bear in mind that a transaction could get arbitrarily long.
      - astrodust 12y ago
        "Much easier" obviously means something different for you. So many utilities have "-r" meaning "recursive", for example, so it requires a real mental shift to think of it in these terms. Describing transactions with arguments seems clunky at best.
        dllthomas 12y ago
        "Much easier" because you can quickly tell the difference between a package you're installing or removing, versus the action to be taken with the package - as opposed to a bunch of strings of the form [a-z0-9]+ that you can't scan and need to actually read.