Cli: Consider removing flag auto-generation?

[lynncyrin]

So @asahasrabuddhe dramatically improved the flag generation in this PR https://github.com/urfave/cli/pull/836. I think that PR was a necessary first step in us rethinking the flag generation, so I super appreciate that work and love that it was done ✨

I think what we've been doing lately is expanding upon that idea behind that PR ^ and "normalizing" the flag code. So the next step in this process is: should we consider removing the flag generation entirely? I think we could keep the _essence_ of flag generation, by adding tests that ensure the flags all have some attributes defined.

Some motivations behind removing auto-generation:

• it many cases you don't end up writing any less code to implement a feature, so auto-generation isn't saving on LOC
• auto-generation is high complexity, and hard to describe to contributors
• given that we are in total control of the inputs and outputs, there's no particular forcing factor that requires this package have auto-generation

@AudriusButkevicius has mentioned supporting this in passing.

[asahasrabuddhe]

I didn't understand why the flags were generated in the first place. I support removing this and would like to contribute to this.

[lynncyrin]

🚀🚀🚀 @asahasrabuddhe 🚀🚀🚀

[asahasrabuddhe]

on it

[asahasrabuddhe]

I have started to work on this but I am still getting an error in the test cases

=== RUN   TestToMan
--- FAIL: TestToMan (0.00s)
    helpers_test.go:20: (docs_test.go:68) Expected .TH "greet" "8" " " 
        .nh
        .ad l
        .TH "Harrison" 
        .nh
        .ad l


        .SH NAME
        .PP
        greet \- Some app


        .SH SYNOPSIS
        .PP
        greet

        .PP
        .RS

        .nf
        [\-\-another\-flag|\-b]
        [\-\-flag|\-\-fl|\-f]=[value]
        [\-\-socket|\-s]=[value]

        .fi
        .RE


        .SH DESCRIPTION
        .PP
        app [first\_arg] [second\_arg]

        .PP
        \fBUsage\fP:

        .PP
        .RS

        .nf
        greet [GLOBAL OPTIONS] command [COMMAND OPTIONS] [ARGUMENTS...]

        .fi
        .RE


        .SH GLOBAL OPTIONS
        .PP
        \fB\-\-another\-flag, \-b\fP: another usage text

        .PP
        \fB\-\-flag, \-\-fl, \-f\fP="":

        .PP
        \fB\-\-socket, \-s\fP="": some 'usage' text (default: value)


        .SH COMMANDS
        .SH config, c
        .PP
        another usage test

        .PP
        \fB\-\-another\-flag, \-b\fP: another usage text

        .PP
        \fB\-\-flag, \-\-fl, \-f\fP="":

        .SS sub\-config, s, ss
        .PP
        another usage test

        .PP
        \fB\-\-sub\-command\-flag, \-s\fP: some usage text

        .PP
        \fB\-\-sub\-flag, \-\-sub\-fl, \-s\fP="":

        .SH info, i, in
        .PP
        retrieve generic information

        .SH some\-command (type string) - Got .nh
        .TH greet(8) 

        .SH Harrison

        .SH NAME
        .PP
        greet \- Some app


        .SH SYNOPSIS
        .PP
        greet

        .PP
        .RS

        .nf
        [\-\-another\-flag|\-b]
        [\-\-flag|\-\-fl|\-f]=[value]
        [\-\-socket|\-s]=[value]

        .fi
        .RE


        .SH DESCRIPTION
        .PP
        app [first\_arg] [second\_arg]

        .PP
        \fBUsage\fP:

        .PP
        .RS

        .nf
        greet [GLOBAL OPTIONS] command [COMMAND OPTIONS] [ARGUMENTS...]

        .fi
        .RE


        .SH GLOBAL OPTIONS
        .PP
        \fB\-\-another\-flag, \-b\fP: another usage text

        .PP
        \fB\-\-flag, \-\-fl, \-f\fP="":

        .PP
        \fB\-\-socket, \-s\fP="": some 'usage' text (default: value)


        .SH COMMANDS
        .SH config, c
        .PP
        another usage test

        .PP
        \fB\-\-another\-flag, \-b\fP: another usage text

        .PP
        \fB\-\-flag, \-\-fl, \-f\fP="":

        .SS sub\-config, s, ss
        .PP
        another usage test

        .PP
        \fB\-\-sub\-command\-flag, \-s\fP: some usage text

        .PP
        \fB\-\-sub\-flag, \-\-sub\-fl, \-s\fP="":

        .SH info, i, in
        .PP
        retrieve generic information

        .SH some\-command (type string)
FAIL

Process finished with exit code 1

@saschagrunert would really appreciate your help here.

UPDATE

This issue is not being reproduced on Travis but still is a problem on my system. Could you help me investigate as to why?

UPDATE 2

This issue is being reproduced with Go 1.13

[saschagrunert]

Hm, it might be related to the indirect blackfriday dependency of go-md2man. Can you try to remove $GOPATH/pkg/mod folder completely and re-test it again? Does it still occur?

[asahasrabuddhe]

The issue here was inconsistent use of Go Module system. I dropped in an environment variable GO111MODULE=on which made a lot of difference. Earlier it would run the tests using a different version of dependencies for different Go versions. Now that has been fixed.

I, however, have a new problem related to short flags now

[asahasrabuddhe]

This is done and released as a part of v1.22.2