Please Change to a More Descriptive and Unique Binary Name

jfelchner
jfelchner
Community Member
edited September 2017 in CLI

Hey all, I literally just saw this come across and I'm ecstatic about it. :D This is going to make scripting 1,000x easier and will allow the holy grail of SSH server passwords stored in 1PW.

I have one small (large) quibble with the post though... the name of the binary.

This tool is, in your own words, designed for "power users, developers, and administrators". And that's great and something that's been sorely needed for a long time, however those are the same people who have tricked out dotfiles. Dotfiles which often contain shorter aliases to longer commands. For example, I have an alias ss, which starts a server for whatever kind of project is contained in the directory where I run it. Generally shorter commands (and especially two letter commands) are used for aliases.

Imagine if every command line tool thought:

Ya know what, I'm the most important tool in my user's system, so I'm going to use a two letter binary name so that it's easier for them to type.

It would be a mess. Every developer would be _required_ to alias to a full path of a binary like:

  • alias opass=/usr/local/Cellar/onepassword/bin/op
  • alias opwd=/usr/local/Cellar/photoshop-cli/bin/op
  • alias opump=/usr/local/Cellar/opportunistic-pumpkin/bin/op

for _every_ tool that used the same binary name (Yes those are contrived obviously but the point stands).

Or what about if a user already has an alias of op to something like alias op=/usr/bin/open or maybe they have a custom "open" function which is smarter and works as they want. Or maybe they have an op alias that always opens the argument in Photoshop so that they can more easily work with images such as GIFs and JPGs, but still be able to double-click in Finder to open quickly in Preview.

Are there other tools out there that use two-letter binary names? Of course. (Don't get me started on the irreprehensible binaries that use one letter). But just because they do it doesn't mean it's right. The general trend is to stay away from that.

Allow the developers to decide which tools in their toolbox are worthy of a two-letter alias. Don't presume that you know best. Change the binary name to something explicit and descriptive like onepassword (preferably) or, if you _must_, opass or opwd. If you do a sufficiently good job at _your_ jobs, the developers will promote the 1PW CLI to op status for you :kiss:

Thanks all!
<3


1Password Version: Not Provided
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Comments

  • jfelchner
    jfelchner
    Community Member

    In the interest of being clear and descriptive (the entire point of my post ;) ) I changed the title of the post.

  • Hey @jfelchner,

    Thanks for the feedback and checking out the tool. We're currently having a discussion about the command name and hopefully we can come to a conclusion that you'll like.

    You mentioned something that I'd love to talk to you about...

    will allow the holy grail of SSH server passwords stored in 1PW

    I really hope you're right. But my research into this so far hasn't been fruitful. I haven't yet found a way to be able to feed ssh a password while it's running in an interactive terminal without using a special terminal like iTerm to add in hooks (like sudolikeaboss does). If you know of a way to do this, I'd love to hear about it.

    Cheers.

    Rick

  • Toonetown
    Toonetown
    Community Member

    I'd like to up vote this too...I think that the name is too short and not unique enough.

  • Thanks for the feedback, @Toonetown.

    Rick

This discussion has been closed.