[
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HADOOP-9158?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=13576999#comment-13576999
]
Jonathan Allen commented on HADOOP-9158:
----------------------------------------
I initially looked at using the commons HelpFormatter but rejected it when I
realised it needed its arguments defined as CLI Options. This seemed too much
of a change at the time but having another look now it might not be as much of
a rework as I originally thought. I'll revisit and see if it's usable without
completely rewriting the Command argument parsing.
The problem I have with -help is that it returns so much text it's just not
useful to the reader. This became apparent to me with the introduction of the
find command as this has several pages of help text by itself and other
commands just get lost off the top. A simple list of available commands with a
brief description of each (similar to man -k) would give users enough
information to identify the command they need and then use -help <command> to
get the more detailed information.
> Tidy up fs -help
> ----------------
>
> Key: HADOOP-9158
> URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HADOOP-9158
> Project: Hadoop Common
> Issue Type: Improvement
> Reporter: Jonathan Allen
> Assignee: Jonathan Allen
> Priority: Minor
> Attachments: HADOOP-9158.patch
>
>
> There are a number of issues with the current fs -help implementation that
> could do with tidying up.
> 1) Running 'hadoop fs -help' displays the full detailed help for all
> commands. This produces a large amount of text and makes it hard to find
> what you're looking for. Better functionality would be:
> - hadoop fs -usage : shows the basic usage information for all commands
> - hadoop fs -help : shows usage and brief summary (couple of lines) for all
> commands
> - hadoop fs -help <command> : shows full description of the specified command
> 2) Help text is hardcoded into each command class. This should be replaced by
> resource files to allow internationalisation.
> 3) Line breaks are hardcoded into the help text. The help text should be
> auto-formatted at display time.
--
This message is automatically generated by JIRA.
If you think it was sent incorrectly, please contact your JIRA administrators
For more information on JIRA, see: http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira
