This moves over the cli `arg` struct tags which are used to generate and
parse things on the command line. Furthermore, we then embed this data
directly in our more general parser struct so that we avoid duplication.
Finally, since the data shares a common struct type, we don't need to do
the manual field-by-field copying to pull things in!
Put these datastructures into an external package so they can be re-used
for parsing elsewhere.
Since we remove these dependencies, we need to manually import the
GAPI's so that they register. Despite efforts to embed them deeper into
the import tree without cycles, this failed. Logically what this told me
is that it actually makes sense to allow a different binary with only
one of the multiple GAPI's contained within.
This gets the list more directly. We could also just lookup a key in the
big map to get the same effect, but this is more logical for now. This
is useful for removing the importing of three packages.
The new version of the urfave/cli library is moving to generics, and
it's completely unclear to me why this is an improvement. Their new API
is very complicated to understand, which for me, defeats the purpose of
golang.
In parallel, I needed to do some upcoming cli API refactoring, so this
was a good time to look into new libraries. After a review of the
landscape, I found the alexflint/go-arg library which has a delightfully
elegant API. It does have a few rough edges, but it's otherwise very
usable, and I think it would be straightforward to add features and fix
issues.
Thanks Alex!
I'm currently refactoring the CLI code. Unfortunately this means a
pretty big churn in the various GAPI frontends. Since nobody is actively
using the puppet frontend code, I'm removing it for now. If someone is
actively using it, and wants to either port it to the new API, or
sponsor the porting of it to the new API, I'm happy to allow it back in.
Sorry Felix, it was a fun idea, and I loved seeing it work, but I can't
personally afford the maintenance cost of having this in right now.
