#742 closed defect (fixed)

"tahoe cp --help" doesn't explain tahoe cp clearly enough to a new user

Reported by: zooko Owned by: davidsarah
Priority: major Milestone: 1.6.0
Component: code-frontend-cli Version: 1.4.1
Keywords: docs cp easy usability Cc:
Launchpad Bug:

Description

From IRC:

<soul9> and...er, is cp just soppesed to copy tahoe targets to tahoe targets?
<soul9> s/soppesed/supposed						[12:49]
<soul9> i mean 'tahoe cp'
<zooko> Hm...								[12:51]
<zooko> Does "tahoe cp --help" not explain?
<soul9> no, it doesn't
<soul9> at least not to my understanding

Change History (5)

comment:1 Changed at 2009-06-21T18:46:04Z by zooko

To close this ticket, either change the output of tahoe cp --help, or add a note in the output of tahoe cp --help pointing the user to the relevant docs such as docs/frontends/CLI.txt, or both.

comment:2 Changed at 2009-12-04T05:32:52Z by davidsarah

  • Component changed from documentation to code-frontend-cli
  • Keywords docs cp easy added; cli removed
  • Milestone changed from undecided to 1.6.0

comment:3 Changed at 2009-12-04T05:33:29Z by davidsarah

  • Keywords usability added

comment:4 Changed at 2009-12-20T00:55:13Z by davidsarah

  • Owner changed from somebody to davidsarah

comment:5 Changed at 2010-01-14T00:13:49Z by davidsarah

  • Resolution set to fixed
  • Status changed from new to closed

This appears to have been fixed by Brian. The current help text is:

$ tahoe cp --help
Usage: tahoe [options] cp FROM.. TO
Options:
  -q, --quiet             Operate silently.
  -V, --version           Display version numbers and exit.
      --version-and-path  Display version numbers and paths to their locations
                          and exit.
  -r, --recursive         Copy source directory recursively.
  -v, --verbose           Be noisy about what is happening.
      --caps-only         When copying to local files, write out filecaps
                          instead of actual data. (only useful for debugging and
                          tree-comparison purposes)
  -d, --node-directory=   Look here to find out which Tahoe node should be used
                          for all operations. The directory should either
                          contain a full Tahoe node, or a file named node.url
                          which points to some other Tahoe node. It should also
                          contain a file named private/aliases which contains
                          the mapping from alias name to root dirnode URI.
                          [default: ~/.tahoe]
  -u, --node-url=         URL of the tahoe node to use, a URL like
                          "http://127.0.0.1:3456". This overrides the URL found
                          in the --node-directory .
      --dir-cap=          Which dirnode URI should be used as the 'tahoe' alias.
      --help              Display this help and exit.

Use 'tahoe cp' to copy files between a local filesystem and a Tahoe virtual
filesystem. Any FROM/TO arguments that begin with an alias indicate Tahoe-side
files, and arguments which do not indicate local files. Directories will be
copied recursively. New Tahoe-side directories will be created when necessary.
Assuming that you have previously set up an alias 'home' with 'tahoe
create-alias home', here are some examples:

tahoe cp ~/foo.txt home: # creates tahoe-side home:foo.txt

tahoe cp ~/foo.txt /tmp/bar.txt home: # copies two files to home:

tahoe cp ~/Pictures home:stuff/my-pictures # copies directory recursively

You can also use a dircap as either FROM or TO target:

tahoe cp
URI:DIR2-RO:j74uhg25nwdpjpacl6rkat2yhm:kav7ijeft5h7r7rxdp5bgtlt3viv32yabqajkrdykozia5544jqa/wiki.html
./ # copy Zooko's wiki page to a local file

This command still has some limitations: symlinks, special files (device nodes,
named pipes), and non-ASCII filenames are not handled very well. Arguments
should probably not have trailing slashes. 'tahoe cp' does not behave as much
like /bin/cp as you would wish, especially with respect to trailing slashes.

which seems to address the complaint in the description.

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