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33 lines
1.5 KiB
33 lines
1.5 KiB
5 years ago
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title = "Things I Learnt The Hard Way - Command Line Options Are Weird, But Helpful"
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date = 2019-07-15
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[taxonomies]
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tags = ["en-au", "books", "things i learnt", "configuration", "command line options", "cli"]
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In this day and age, when everything has a graphical interface, does it still
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makes sense to add command line options to your application? In fact, it does.
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<!-- more -->
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When I mentioned the configuration file, you may have thought about using
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adding a default path for it and using the same file over and over.
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Well, that's not wrong, but what if you want to use a different configuration?
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Would you keep moving the original configuration file to another place, moving
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your configuration back and keep this back and forth? Keep both versions and
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just use a [symbolic link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_link) with
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the configuration filename pointing to the one you want?
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Why not add a command line option in which the user can select which
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configuration file should be loaded?
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This would make their life _and yours_ easy.
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Also, be aware that, today, there may be libraries to handle command line in
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every language, which will help you build a good command line interface, along
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with standardizing it to have the same interface as other applications.
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{{ chapters(prev_chapter_link="/books/things-i-learnt/resist-easy", prev_chapter_title="Resist The Temptation Of Easy", next_chapter_link="/books/things-i-learnt/start-stupid", next_chapter_title="Start Stupid") }}
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