launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Jamu Kakar <jkakar@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 5:27 PM, Aaron Bentley <aaron@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 11-08-08 10:38 AM, Jamu Kakar wrote:
>> This sounds a lot like a library I wrote some time ago called
>> Commandant.  It's a wrapper around bzrlib that let's you easily write
>> applications with a Bazaar-like user experience.
>
> It's not surprising, since I've done so much hacking on bzr.  But I've
> long thought that the command classes of bzrlib were somewhat redundant,
> since they only exist to house the "run" method.  I think that functions
> are a better match for subcommands.  Unlike bzrlib, script_commands
> doesn't require declaring options or their types.  It's just less friction.

I agree.  I've often wondered about building something simpler from
scratch.  At the time I implemented Commandant it was much
easier/faster for me to build on bzrlib than start from scratch.  I
was also curious about learning more about bzrlib, which I did.  I was
also interested in being able to expose the ability for people to
write plugins for Commandant-based applications, but I've never
actually needed it, and so haven't done anything about it.

>> It might be
>> interesting if you want to go further and add topics, run shell
>> scripts, etc.:
>
> I've no doubt Commandant provides a more polished user experience.  I
> didn't think that was important for utility scripts, but maybe it is.
> Perhaps we should consider using it for our scripts.  Certainly,
> anything that helps us avoid writing the same old boilerplate for our
> utility scripts is a win.

The Landscape team has a tool called landscape-devel that builds on
Commandant and exposes many commands that are useful during
development.  At Fluidinfo we have a similar thing that is more
focused on operations, and it also works very well.

Whether or not you use Commandant, I do think that having nice tools
for development and operations-related activities is important.  In
general, software teams tend do a poor job with these kind of tools
because we don't plan enough time for them and they get pushed to the
bottom of the priority list pretty fast.

Thanks,
J.