Command line interface

[techtonik]

It would be extremely useful nice if this tool could provide a unified interactive command line interface across unix for most frequent commands.

For example, below is my typical session in unix environment (and the reason why I am here through PyPI) - I am trying to see a list of all human users on the system:

~# users
root
~# users -h
users: invalid option -- 'h'
Try `users --help' for more information.
~# users -help
users: invalid option -- 'h'
Try `users --help' for more information.
~# users -help
users: invalid option -- 'h'
Try `users --help' for more information.
~# users --help
Usage: users [OPTION]... [FILE]
Output who is currently logged in according to FILE.
If FILE is not specified, use /var/run/utmp.  /var/log/wtmp as FILE is common.

      --help     display this help and exit
      --version  output version information and exit

Report users bugs to [email protected]
GNU coreutils home page: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
General help using GNU software: <http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>
Report users translation bugs to <http://translationproject.org/team/>
For complete documentation, run: info coreutils 'users invocation'
~# man users
...

And it is unsuccessful. What I'd expect is:

# pip install unix
# unix users
root
techtonik
# unix -h
unix users     --- list users
# unix users -h
unix users [--all]

options:
  --all   --- also list system users 

https://askubuntu.com/questions/257421/list-all-human-users

[fmenabe]

This module aims (in disorder):

• to provide an unified API across Unix systems for some basic operations (executing commands, manipulating files, ...)
• to manage both localhost and remote host (via SSH) uniformly
• for some operating systems (Linux, Solaris, *BSD, ...) implement specifics API
• overload object for flexiblity (ex: host = Ubuntu(Linux(unix.Local()))). By using this system, it is possible to implement others APIs (ex: https://github.com/fmenabe/python-kvm, https://github.com/fmenabe/python-lxc)
• order API elements (users, path, ...) in properties (ex: host.users.list(), host.path.exists('/tmp'))

Exposing APIs with a command-line interface (or even a REPL) is a nice idea! But, from the goals of this module it may not be simple and, as you pointed out, I don't even had time to make the documentation ... So I don't think it will be done soon.

Anyway, thanks for your contribution!

[techtonik]

Well, with some effort being put into command line tool, I'd expect people to come up with PRs that close their immediate needs for the tool (and use / improve API as a result). Using API directly takes more time and effort, especially if it doesn't have docs. =)