On 02/25/2015 12:51 AM, Kosta Arvanitis wrote:
To me this is more of an extension of help than an actual unique command line option. The reason being that it is now the only command (aside from help) which does not actually perform an action on a radio.
It is a query command. It allows the code to be self-documenting, as opposed to having to maintain a separate list that will inevitably become out of date.
If we are extending the list of radios why not apply it to set modes, duplex, etc...? Its starting to become rather confusing, imo.
If you are asking for further query commands, I believe that would be a good idea. It will be beneficial to introspect into the tool, when the accepted values may be conditionally or dynamically defined.
On the other hand the list of radios is rather long. Another option may be to print the list of radio at the end help output or to only print it out in verbose help mode, for example.
I do not think it belongs in the help text. That block is already far too long, even after removing the radio list. It will only get worse.
Most people are going to run --help, not see the list of radios, and
they will need to figure out what command to run to see the list of radios, previously a one step process is now a two-step (with some thought).
If they need to specify the radio, it will tell them. They will then use --help to find the option to set the radio (-r). The help text for the that option tells them to use --list-radios to find the list of valid values. While it's slightly more work, I don't see it as a creating a problem for users.