[rt-devel] Confusing user interface in commandline rt

[stoffel at lucent.com]

>>>>> "Dan" == Dan Shearer <dan at tellurian.com.au> writes:

Dan> Since nearly everyone uses the commandline interface
Dan> noninteractively, what about inverting this logic. If there is a
Dan> --prompt flag or environment variable then destructive commands
Dan> prompt, otherwise they just go an be destructive. The reason I
Dan> suggest this is because it is usually harder to debug
Dan> noninteractive commands, especially for beginners setting things
Dan> up for the first time with their particular MTA/webserver/etc.

I really don't understand your chain of thought here.  If people are
using the command line interface non-interactively, then they should
be the ones who need to add in the -f (or --force) switch to make them
run properly.  

Dan> On the other hand, anyone who habitually does things from the
Dan> commandline should be well enough informed to know that he should
Dan> have an environment variable set at all times for safety.

This also doesn't make sense.  Just because I use the CLI all the time
doesn't mean that my fingers don't make mistakes, or that I don't
transpose numbers by accident, etc.

Heck, what I *really* want is a curses based interface to RT, or even
better, one that's useable from within Emacs and which looks like the
VM mail reader.  But I don't know enough elisp to do that.  

Anyway, I'm proposing that:

- all CLI commands prompt when asked for destructive behavior.  

- non-interactive CLI commands get updated to use the -f or --force
  switch to make them happy. 

John