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The help produced for a command options should give more information

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Metadata

Project
craft-cli
Number
#132
Type
issue
State
open
Author
facundobatista
Labels
—
Created
Updated
Closed
—

Current evaluation

Enhance option help to show value requirements, defaults, cardinality or repeatability, and choices. The current help pipeline renders option names and messages only, with no recorded design decision.

Suggested action: needs triage

Reason: HelpBuilder renders options solely from title/text pairs, while GlobalArgument stores choices separately and no production handling of nargs was found, so the requested metadata remains unsurfaced. The issue has no labels, assignee, or comments and explicitly says a presentation must first be defined, leaving the desired format and combinations unresolved.

Evaluated by: mr-cal-bot

Impact: 42 Quick Win: 8 Complexity: 61 Confidence: 89 Actionability: 49

Issue body

Currently each option information for a command only states the option and the help message; see this output for a fake command as it's produced right now: ``` --name: Example of a parameter that expects one value --rank: Expects a value, but has a default -c, --confirm: This option just puts a flag in True -s, --stars: There may be one or more stars --planets: There may be zero or more planets --profile: Option that has choices ``` However, the `argparse` module shows more information: ``` --name NAME Example of a parameter that expects one value --rank RANK Expects a value, but has a default -c, --confirm This option just puts a flag in True -s [STARS], --stars [STARS] There may be one or more stars --planets [PLANETS ...] There may be zero or more planets --profile {simple,kubernetes,machine} Option that has choices ``` While I don't like the argparse output (at all), we could find a way to express that each parameter... - expects a value and it's not just a flag - has a default - may be used more than once (but at least one may be needed) - has some choices to select from Note that some of these combinations may happen (e.g. the command has choices and also a default). We need to define a way to express this information (or at least part of it) in a nice way, and then implement it.

Evaluation history

Date Model Scores Action Summary
stealth/space-bunny-alpha
Impact: 42
Quick Win: 8
Complexity: 61
Confidence: 89
Actionability: 49
needs triage Enhance option help to show value requirements, defaults, cardinality or repeatability, and choices. The current help pipeline renders option names and messages only, with no recorded design decision.
stealth/space-bunny-alpha
Impact: 45
Quick Win: 10
Complexity: 60
Confidence: 92
Actionability: 55
needs triage Command help still shows only option aliases and descriptions; value, default, repeatability, and choice metadata is omitted, while the desired presentation remains undefined.
qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b
Impact: 40
Quick Win: 12
Complexity: 50
Confidence: 75
Actionability: 60
needs triage Feature request to improve command option help output to show defaults, choices, nargs, and other metadata. Open 1349 days with no labels, comments, or assignee.
qwen/qwen3.8-27b
Impact: 35
Quick Win: 16
Staleness: 85
Complexity: 55
Confidence: 70
Support Request: 10
needs triage Feature request to enrich command option help output to indicate whether an option expects a value, has a default, is repeatable, or has choices, similar to argparse. Open since 2021 with no comments, labels, or assignee; help rendering code still only shows option strings and help text.
qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b
Staleness: 95
Complexity: 45
Confidence: 90
Support Request: 10
close stale Feature request to enhance CLI command option help output with details like defaults, choices, and repetition. Open for over 3.5 years with zero comments or maintainer engagement.
qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6
Staleness: 95
Complexity: 60
Confidence: 80
Support Request: 10
close stale Proposal to enhance CLI help output by displaying option metadata like defaults, multiplicities, and choices. Untriaged, inactive for over 3 years with no maintainer engagement or implementation progress.

Update history

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Related work

  • Related To: craft-cli#109 (confidence 58%)

    Commit f4a3bca merged requested-help-improvements, indicating adjacent historical work, but there is no evidence that PR implemented this request.

Related issues

No related issues found above the similarity threshold.