Adding "found" might seem minor but I feel it has a slight softening on the message. It also maintains scanability as it is at the end and short.
As this is a one-off message change and not a styling issue to be consistent with, I think this is safe to put in a patch release.
In text communication you need to balance
- Scannability, putting the most important information upfront
- Brevity so people don't get lost in the message
- Softness to help ease people through a frustrating experience
I feel we weren't doing great on the first two points, so tried to
iterate on the messages to improve them. I hope we aren't suffering too
much on the third point as a side effect.
This is an intermediate solution for #4408. As there were no agreeed
upon goals, I went with what I felt read well and that I saw commonly
used on non-clap commands.
- "information" isn't really a necessary word.
- I originally favored `Print this help` but realied that doesn't read
correctly in completions.
- Besides being shorter, the reason for the flipped short/long hint is
it gives people the context they need for scanning, emphasizing
"summary" and "more".
Fixes#4409
From
https://rustc-dev-guide.rust-lang.org/diagnostics.html#suggestion-style-guide
> Suggestions should not be a question. In particular, language like
> "did you mean" should be avoided. Sometimes, it's unclear why a
> particular suggestion is being made. In these cases, it's better to be
> upfront about what the suggestion is.
>
> The message may contain further instruction such as "to do xyz, use"
> or "to do xyz, use abc".
Inspired by #2766
This used to be more magical in clap 3 and people are having a hard time
discovering how to get this in clap 4, so let's add examples:
- discrete numbers
- foreign enums
Just having `--help` or `--version` can make us get invalid args instead
of invalid subcommands. It doesn't make sense to do this unless
positionals are used. Even then it might not make sense but this is at
least a step in the right direction.
Unsure how I feel about this being backported to clap 3. It most likely
would be fine?
This was noticed while looking into #4218
This was ported over from the usage parser which modeled after docopt.
We just never got around to implementing the rest of the syntax.
However, when considering this as a standalone feature, an
`arg!(--flag <value>)`, outside of other context, should be optional.
This is how the help would display it.
Fixes#4206
In looking at other help output, I noticed that they use two spaces, in
place of clap's 4, and it doesn't suffer from legibility. If it
doesn't make the output worse, let's go ahead and make it as dense so we
fit more content on the screen.
This is a part of #4132
If short help is too long for the terminal, clap will automatically
switch to next line help. As part of next line help for longs, we add a
blank line between args. This helps make the args clearer when dealing
with multiple paragraphs. However, its not as much needed for short and
subcommands (always short), so now short matches subcommands.
This was inspired by #3300 and a part of #4132
In switching to title case for help headings (#4123), it caused me to
look at "subcommand" in a fresh light. I can't quite put my finger on
it but "Subcommand" looks a bit sloppy. I also have recently been
surveying other CLIs and they just use "command" as well.
All of them are commands anyways, just some are children of others
(subcommands) while others are not (root or top-level commands, or just
command). Context is good enough for clarifying subcommands from root
commands.
This is part of #4132
The setting was added to resolve#769. The reason it was optional is out
of concern for applications with a lot of positional arguments. I think
those cases are rare enough that we should just push people to override
the usage. Positional arguments are generally important enough, even if
optional, to show.
As a side effect, this fixed some bugs with
`dont_collapse_args_in_usage` where it would repeat an argument in a
smart usage.
As a side effect, smart usage now shows `--` when it should
In surveying various tools and CLI parsers, I noticed they list the
subcommands first. This puts an emphasis on them which makes sense
because that is most likely what an end user is supposed to pass in
next.
Listing them last aligns with the usage order but it probably doesn't
outweigh the value of getting a user moving forward.
I see them fulfilling two roles
- A form of bolding
- As a callback to their placeholder in usage
However, it is a bit of an unpolished look and no other CLI seems to do
it. This looks a bit more proefessional. We have colored help for
formatting and I think the sections relation to usage will be clear
enough.
