Re: [BuildStream] Breaking change: changing '--force or fail' to y/n prompts

[James Ennis <james ennis codethink com>]

Hi all,

On 2018-12-14 08:09, Angelos Evripiotis via BuildStream-list wrote:
> ** Summary **
>
> Thanks again for your time on this Tristan, I think we've reached a 
> good point
> for a summary. There's only one outstanding question for the
> 1.4 release I think.
>
> ## Breaking changes for 1.4 release
>
> I will:
>
> o Remove the auto-init functionality, replace with nice hints.
> o Remove the unconditional "Are you sure?" prompts on workspace reset 
> and close.
+1
> o Remove the prompt config section from buildstream.conf.
> o Change all the commands with --force to prompt if it is not
> specified and interactive.
>   They will abort immediately if not forced and not interactive.
> o Update NEWS and docs accordingly.

Just to be clear, we're proposing the following prompts:
1.) `bst checkout` into a non-empty directory.
2.) `bst init` in a project that already exists.
3.) `bst source-checkout` into a non-empty directory.
4.) `bst workspace open` into a non-empty directory.

I couldn't find any more... Please let me know if there are!

I feel as if whether we wish to receive a prompt here or fail if we 
don't declare a `--force` option is down to preference/experience of the 
user.

And all the cases which this proposal would affect boil down to the fact 
that something already exists and we want to overwrite it.

IMO: I believe the prompt is nice because it's interactive and will save 
you some loading/staging time, yet I feel as if we can achieve the same 
thing by failing with a message that says something along the lines of: 
'foo already exists, use the `-f` option if you wish to overwrite foo'.

This then has the benefit of not requiring the extra work to support 
--assume-yes for our prompts.

> ## Non-breaking changes post 1.4
>
> If it turns out the prompts are getting in the way, later we will:
>
> o Add '--safe', or '--no-force', or '--assume-*' cli options. Perfect
> naming still pending.
> o Add matching options to buildstream.conf.
>
> ## Remaining question for 1.4
>
> It may turn out that we never need extra prompt config in
> buildstream.conf, maybe
> the prompts won't be annoying enough.
>
> If that's the case then there seems little point in making changes to
> scheduler.on-error.
>
> Should we gamble that scheduler.on-error can stay as is,
> at least until BuildStream 2000?
>
> My vote is yes.
>
> Cheers!
> Angelos
>
> P.S. I still hope some fellow anti-prompters will speak up :o)
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Thank you for the summary write up Angelos, really appreciated!

Cheers,
James