Launchpad needs a command line

Launchpad has a web UI, an email interface, and a ReST API that exposes every object in the database.

There are also a bunch of client programs, command line and graphical, that talk to Launchpad to do various things.

What we don’t yet have, and what I think would be great, is a systematic client that lets you manipulate
everything
from the command line. There’s some code that starts towards this in Hydrazine, lptools and others, but I think having just a single tool that eventually does everything would be more discoverable and avoid unnecessary fragmentation or duplication.

(That’s not to say there’s not room for others that are guis, that are specialized to particular projects or that encapsulate a lot of policy or opinion about what they’re doing.)

So dobey and I have agreed to gradually merge hydrazine into lptools, and with other people to work towards making lptools cover everything you can do through the web UI or the API. If you have scripts you’ve written yourself, perhaps you’d like to merge them in.

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7 Responses to “Launchpad needs a command line”

  1. ScottK Says:

    I would love to have an LP equivalent of bts show bugnumber.

  2. Martin Pool Says:

    So that shows it in a web browser window? That sounds pretty trivial.

  3. Robert R Says:

    I think it would be nice if there was one that could be logged onto via SSH or other remote console protocols, especially if it was both script handling and could be controlled by front ends.

  4. Martin Pool Says:

    Robert R, what do you mean? I’m talking about something that you could happily run on one machine that you’re connected to over an SSH session. I don’t think letting you SSH into a Launchpad machine as such is really on the cards. (It would be quite neat to implement separately though…)

  5. Ian Scott Says:

    I think it would be a good idea. It would have to go through ssh, and run on a separate server. There would need to be some advanced kind of security, so not everyone can edit everything. It would be good for testing command-line tools.

  6. MeaCulpa Says:

    And what if the bazaar launchpad plugin can be extended that way, like more functions on bugs, get url for code previews, etc.

  7. Dan Connolly Says:

    I would have liked to see more motivation
    along the lines of ‘bts show #’ in the article.

    Given that there’s already an API, “a systematic client that lets you manipulate
    everything from the command line” seems like an odd target. Is this a solution in search of a problem?

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