Deprecating port list

[Andre Stechert]

On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 10:06 PM, Rainer Müller <raimue at macports.org> wrote:
> Andre Stechert wrote:
>> In some other CLI's (e.g., mysql, IOS), the word "show" is used to
>> communicate what is being done here.
>>
>> e.g.,
>>
>>    port show outdated
>>    port show installed
>>    port show maintainer:nomaintainer
>
> As I said before, if we are going to use a single command, I would
> expect consistent output. But for installed I would like to see
> the version which is installed, for outdated I would like to see the new
> and old version.
>
> 'port outdated' and 'port installed' have a different output format. For
> this functionality it is not enough to expand the pseudo-port only.
>
> How would you combine that into a single 'show' command?

First off - thanks for hearing this out.  Second, sorry for not
connecting all the
dots above.  I hate repeating myself, and hate it when I inadvertently
force others
to do so.  Apologies.

Re: 'show', please understand that the idea is not to create a new
'port show installed' command
alongside 'port installed', 'port echo installed', and 'port list
installed'.  Rather I meant to say
that, in the interest of reducing user confusion, the word "show"
might convey what we seem
to mean more than "echo", but that it also makes a lot of sense to
reduce the number of ways
we have of saying the same thing (echo vs. list).

Re: a single 'show' command vs. the different formats of 'port
installed' and 'port echo installed',
I guess I would personally try to reduce the number of formats to one
or at least generate the
multiple formats with one command with options.

The difference in the output between 'port installed' and 'port echo
installed' seems
to be about as minor as the difference between 'port echo installed'
and 'port list installed':

'port installed' lines look like: a52dec @0.7.4_0 (active)
'port echo installed' lines look like: a52dec                         @0.7.4_0
'port list installed' lines look like: a52dec
@0.7.4          audio/a52dec

Why not just make the output of "port echo installed" rich enough to
handle whatever use cases
are currently being handled by "port installed" and "port list installed"?

Outdated is similar:

'port outdated' lines look like: aalib
1.4rc5_3 < 1.4rc5_4
'port echo outdated' lines look like: aalib                          @1.4rc5_3
'port list outdated' lines look like: aalib
@1.4rc5         graphics/aalib

<snip>
>> A more radical suggestion would be to require something like "echo" or
>> "show" in front of all non-verb targets.
>
> And you forgot:
> cat, cd, contents, dependents, deps, dir, distfiles, file,
> notes (on trunk), platform, url, usage, variants, work
>
> There are lots of actions/commands which are not a verb. It would not
> make sense to require a verb before them. What should it be? 'port do'?

For contents, dependents, deps, dir, distfiles, file, notes, platform,
url, and variants, "port show ..." seems pretty natural to me, but
YMMV.

port cat - well, i guess technically cat is technically a noun, but in
this case, I think it's being used as a verb :-).
port cd - you can do that only in interactive mode, right?

Cheers!
Andre