FWIW, I (and probably 99.9% of the Maven user-base) have desired just this kind of option for plugins for a l o o o n g time. Something like:
mvn nifty help mvn nifty -h mvn nifty --help mvn nifty:help mvn nifty:option mvn nifty and if you do: mvn nifty:invalid you just get the help (where "nifty" is any plugin; "any", as in for all plugins...if the plugin can be downloaded, help is there). That's pretty canonical CLI behavior. I don't know whether that's something that requires a modification to the core of Maven, or not, and I really don't care. It's a huge dis-service to all users to not have this available, thereby forcing the user to chase down the web-page for every plugin they have an interest in. Finding the definitive help information for a plugin should be absolutely trivial and built-in; having the CLI option which give the code-you-are-executing-right-now the ability to answer that question avoids the issues we have today with multiple sources for a plugin with different HTML usage information. And while I'm at it, and relatedly, whatever happened to "-G" to get me a list of all plugins??? I know it ain't easy, but how about giving me a list of all the names of the plugins found in the configured repositories when I do "mvn -G", or "mvn plugin:help", or "mvn plugin:list", ....whatever. Cache the result in the repositories if you need to, but make it easy for the user to find and use plugins. And I might as well chuck in: why in the world do I need to do "mvn nifty:nifty" and not just "mvn nifty"? Yes; a plugin can have more than one goal - that's great; but if I do "mvn nifty" it just means "mvn nifty:nifty" and if I do "mvn nifty:wizbang" well, then that's the wizbang goal of the nifty plugin. -Jan On Feb 4, 2008 5:09 AM, Vincent Siveton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > > 2008/2/3, Jason van Zyl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > I think keeping this out of the core, be that the lifecycle executor > > or the CLI would be a far better option. > > Agree for CLI. > > > Vincent, just to be clear you have taken the logic that already exists > > in the help plugin? > > More wrapped logic from PluginXdocGenerator. > > Cheers, > > Vincent > > > > On 3-Feb-08, at 3:17 PM, Brett Porter wrote: > > > > > Something like > > > > > > mvn -H idea:idea or mvn -H idea > > > > > > which is akin to what Subversion has, for example. > > > > > > this would allow the CLI to translate to the appropriate > > > help:describe goal and then exit, which is pretty clean, as compared > > > to modifying the lifecycle executor. > > > > > > - Brett > > > > > > On 04/02/2008, at 10:13 AM, Vincent Siveton wrote: > > > > > >> Hi Brett, > > >> > > >> What do you propose for cmd line switch? > > >> > > >> Personally, I am fine with mvn my-plugin:help which seems more > > >> common. > > >> A lot of tools (all?) have an help option. > > >> > > >> Cheers, > > >> > > >> Vincent > > >> > > >> 2008/2/3, Brett Porter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > >>> Would a different lifecycle or command line switch be more intuitive > > >>> than this? > > >>> > > >>> On 04/02/2008, at 9:55 AM, Vincent Siveton wrote: > > >>> > > >>>> Hi, > > >>>> > > >>>> I realize that the fix for MPLUGIN-40 (All plugins should by > > >>>> default > > >>>> have an auto-generated goal 'help') is definitely *not* intuitive > > >>>> for > > >>>> the end user. > > >>>> > > >>>> Background: > > >>>> I created a plugin-plugin goal which generates an Help mojo. This > > >>>> generated mojo just displays the goals and their > > >>>> description/parameters for a given plugin project. Since it is a > > >>>> goal > > >>>> inside the maven-plugin-plugin, we need to release it and *all* > > >>>> plugins to make available this new feature (it could take a > > >>>> time ;) ). > > >>>> > > >>>> I proposed another approach: modify the DefaultLifecycleExecutor to > > >>>> handle this particular goal. So we could call "mvn idea:help" to > > >>>> display all available idea goals and "mvn idea:toto" will throw an > > >>>> exception by displaying the help. > > >>>> Pro: more easy for the end user and works for all plugins > > >>>> Con: just available in mvn 2.0.9+ > > >>>> > > >>>> WDYT? > > >>>> > > >>>> Vincent > > >>>> > > >>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > >>>> To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > >>>> For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > >>>> > > >>> > > >>> > > >>> --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > >>> To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > >>> For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > >>> > > >>> > > >> > > >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > >> To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > >> For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > >> > > > > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > > Thanks, > > > > Jason > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------- > > Jason van Zyl > > Founder, Apache Maven > > jason at sonatype dot com > > ---------------------------------------------------------- > > > > > > > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
