Background

I am designing a CLI for a container build tool I am making. It uses Gentoo’s Portage behind the scenes

Question

I want to give the user the ability to specify a custom package repository. The repository must have a name, URI and sync type.

custom_repo: {
    uri: 'https://...',
    name: 'custom',
    sync_type: 'git',
}

How do I have the user represent this in the CLI? keep in mind, this is not the main input and is optional.

One way is to make this only provide-able via a config file using JSON or another structured data representation. But I want to see if theres a good way to do it in the CLI

What I am thinking of: command --custom-repo uri='https://...',name=custom,sync_type=git --custom-repo ... [main input]

Is this the best way of doing this?

  • OscarEnglish
    2•11 months ago

    That is assuming it’s hosted on github.

      • OscarEnglish
        3•11 months ago

        Ok, then I don’t understand at all. What happens if I host my git project on https://myawesomeproject.dev/? How can the application infer anything by this URL?

        • @SpaceNoodle
          0•11 months ago

          Then replace “github.com” with “myawesomeproject.dev”. There’s more to the URI than just the hostname.

          • OscarEnglish
            3•11 months ago

            But you can’t assume that it follows the github format of https:////.git. In my example, I meant that you would just use that url to clone it:

            git clone https://myawesomeproject.dev

            One real-world example of this is ziglings.org (though it’s technically just a redirect).

            • @SpaceNoodle
              -1•11 months ago

              That’s not a GitHub format; it’s a git format.

              • OscarEnglish
                3•11 months ago

                No, it isn’t. Git doesn’t care what the url is, as long as it uses a supported transport protocol.