Summary

The nova-manage tool uses module introspection and docstrings to learn about commands. Using an incomplete command will offer up some tips as to what things you might be trying to do, but there is no 'help' command, and individual categories (ie, network, user, project) do not have a help command that will show arguments to their commands. Running a command with mandatory arguments will show the docstring for the function (which includes arguments), but functions with no arguments or with optional arguments will not have a way to show their description and arguments.

Release Note

Implement help to description and arguments for nova-manage commands.

Rationale

If a command has optional arguments, you can't just call it to get it to tell you what they are. If we had help for each command module, when called as nova-manage user help it would show all commands available (like calling the module name with no command function works now), and when called nova-manage user help admin would show the docstring for the admin command.

Implementation

Could either be in a base class that all command classes inherit from, or could be coded into the dispatch path for looking up functions.

Wiki: blueprint-nova-manage-help (last edited 2010-11-04 05:55:17 by ToddWilley)