Make command line GNU-compatible

While trying to implement zsh completion for Paket I found that the way Paket handles command line arguments is a bit off to what zsh regards as “the right way” which in turn makes implementing completion overly complex. I also found that some strings Paket accepts as arguments are (for reasons beyond my understanding) not written as such.

Take for example this line:

paket add nuget NUnit group Test project Foo.csproj --verbose --force

What’s the command and what are parameters?

• add nuget is the command
• group is an argument
  • Test is a parameter to the group argument
• project is an argument
  • Foo.csproj is a parameter to the group argument
• --verbose is an argument that takes no parameters
• --force is an argument that takes no parameters

So how should command line completion distinct between command and arguments (with or without parameters)? The short answer is that it can’t. At least, I was not able to make it work with zsh without going great lengths and essentially reimplement the standard GNU-style arguments completion that ships with zsh (a 16KB function).

My suggestion is to align the command line to GNU-style:

paket add nuget NUnit --group Test --project Foo.csproj --verbose --force
paket add nuget NUnit --group=Test --project=Foo.csproj --verbose --force

Both should be regarded as the same. If the second line won’t be parsed by Argu, that’s fine with me as well.

I know this results in a breaking change, I suggest this to be planned for v4.

[agross]

I spent some time to work on my zsh completion and GNU-style args for paket add. Feedback is appreciated!

https://asciinema.org/a/76d0gjmogm7f0vxntx05f2u94

[enricosada]

Fixed

USAGE: paket add [--help] [--version <version constraint>] [--project <path>] [--group <name>]
                 [--create-new-binding-files] [--force] [--interactive] [--redirects] [--clean-redirects]
                 [--no-install] [--no-resolve] [--keep-major] [--keep-minor] [--keep-patch] [--touch-affected-refs]
                 <package ID>

NUGET:

    <package ID>          NuGet package ID

OPTIONS:

    --version, -V <version constraint>
                          dependency version constraint
    --project, -p <path>  add the dependency to a single project only
    --group, -g <name>    add the dependency to a group (default: Main group)
    --create-new-binding-files
                          create binding redirect files if needed
    --force, -f           force download and reinstallation of all dependencies
    --interactive, -i     ask for every project whether to add the dependency
    --redirects           create binding redirects
    --clean-redirects     remove binding redirects that were not created by Paket
    --no-install          do not modify projects
    --no-resolve          do not resolve
    --keep-major          only allow updates that preserve the major version
    --keep-minor          only allow updates that preserve the minor version
    --keep-patch          only allow updates that preserve the patch version
    --touch-affected-refs touch project files referencing affected dependencies to help incremental build tools
                          detecting the change
    --silent, -s          suppress console output
    --verbose, -v         print detailed information to the console
    --log-file <path>     print output to a file
    --from-bootstrapper   call coming from the '--run' feature of the bootstrapper
    --help                display this list of options.