MM command prefix and-or single mm-admin CLI frontend
Hi,
I've been meaning to send this mail for a long time, but for one reason or another (mostly fear of making UI suggestions for a project whose internals I don't really know) have repeatedly managed to put it off!
It sounds trivial, but one thing that I've always regarded as a usability problem in MM2 is the proliferation of admin command names. As a terminal junky, a common way to learn the functionality of a multi-purpose set of command line tools is to type their common prefix and press tab to see what commands are available. In MM, there is no common prefix, so this option isn't available and memory is needed to remember the right command name... commands like 'newlist' and 'config_list' are spread higgledy-piggledy through name-space rather than being neatly stacked in one corner. It would be great for usability if MM3 could use admin commands with e.g. a "mm-" prefix (with installation of backwards compatible versions maybe as an option)
An alternative approach, used most prominently by Trac, is to have a single admin command which can either behave like a non-interactive process or a subcommand interpreter, depending on how it is called. I would be happy to spend some time on a mm-admin command, using the same Python "cmd" module as trac-admin if there is the interest. This might also involve moving some of the intelligence out of the admin scripts and into the API, which is also good news for people like me who have a need/desire to hook MM into a wider system management framework.
Anyway, that's the idea --- what do you think? And apologies for being presumptuous ;)
Best wishes, Andy
PS. I'm also interested in taking a look at MM3 templating... is this being actively worked on or did it stall after the GSoC effort?
participants (4)
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Andy Buckley
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Barry Warsaw
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David Champion
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Stephen J. Turnbull