DockerCLI/cmd/docker
Sebastiaan van Stijn a6e96c758e
cli: improve output and consistency for unknown (sub)commands
Before this patch, output for invalid top-level and sub-commands differed.
For top-level commands, the CLI would print an error-message and a suggestion
to use `--help`. For missing *subcommands*, we would hit a different code-path,
and different output, which includes full "usage" / "help" output.

While it is a common convention to show usage output, and may have been
a nice gesture when docker was still young and only had a few commands
and options ("you did something wrong; here's an overview of what you
can use"), that's no longer the case, and many commands have a _very_
long output.

The result of this is that the error message, which is the relevant
information in this case - "You mis-typed something" - is lost in the
output, and hard to find (sometimes even requiring scrolling back).

The output is also confusing, because it _looks_ like something ran
successfully (most of the output is not about the error!).

Even further; the suggested resolution (try `--help` to see the correct
options) is rather redundant, because running teh command with `--help`
produces _exactly_ the same output as was just showh, baring the error
message. As a fun fact, due to the usage output being printed, the
output even contains not one, but _two_ "call to actions";

- `See 'docker volume --help'.` (under the erro message)
- `Run 'docker volume COMMAND --help' for more information on a command.`
  (under the usage output)

In short; the output is too verbose, confusing, and doesn't provide
a good UX. Let's reduce the output produced so that the focus is on the
important information.

This patch:

- Changes the usage to the short-usage.
- Changes the error-message to mention the _full_ command instead of only
  the command after `docker` (so `docker no-such-command` instead of
  `no-such-command`).
- Prefixes the error message with the binary / root-command name
  (usually `docker:`); this is something we can still decide on, but
  it's a pattern we already use in some places. The motivation for this
  is that `docker` commands can often produce output that's a combination
  of output from the CLI itself, output from the daemon, and even output
  from the container. The `docker:` prefix helps to distinguish where
  the message originated from (the `docker` CLI in this case).
- Adds an empty line between the error-message and the "call to action"
  (`Run 'docker volume --help'...` in the example below). This helps
  separating the error message ("unkown flag") from the call-to-action.

Before this patch:

Unknown top-level command:

    docker nosuchcommand foo
    docker: 'nosuchcommand' is not a docker command.
    See 'docker --help'

Unknown sub-command:

    docker volume nosuchcommand foo

    Usage:  docker volume COMMAND

    Manage volumes

    Commands:
      create      Create a volume
      inspect     Display detailed information on one or more volumes
      ls          List volumes
      prune       Remove unused local volumes
      rm          Remove one or more volumes
      update      Update a volume (cluster volumes only)

    Run 'docker volume COMMAND --help' for more information on a command.

After this patch:

Unknown top-level command:

    docker nosuchcommand foo
    docker: unknown command: docker nosuchcommand

    Run 'docker --help' for more information

Unknown sub-command:

    docker volume nosuchcommand foo
    docker: unknown command: 'docker volume nosuchcommand'

    Usage:  docker volume COMMAND

    Run 'docker volume --help' for more information

Signed-off-by: Sebastiaan van Stijn <github@gone.nl>
2024-07-05 02:28:11 +02:00
..
internal/signals cli-plugins: terminate plugin when CLI exits 2023-12-12 13:54:30 +00:00
winresources Use goversioninfo to create Windows Version Info 2021-10-11 16:54:22 +02:00
aliases.go build: set default context builder if not specified 2022-11-04 08:42:34 +01:00
builder.go build: allow BuildKit to be used on Windows daemons that advertise it 2024-06-20 02:49:22 +02:00
builder_test.go Update go:build comments to go1.21 2024-06-18 12:17:13 +02:00
builder_windows_test.go build: set default context builder if not specified 2022-11-04 08:42:34 +01:00
completions.go cmd/docker: registerCompletionFuncForGlobalFlags: take store.Store as argument 2024-01-11 22:31:17 +01:00
docker.go cli: improve output and consistency for unknown (sub)commands 2024-07-05 02:28:11 +02:00
docker_test.go cli: improve output and consistency for unknown (sub)commands 2024-07-05 02:28:11 +02:00
docker_windows_386.go remove pre-go1.17 build-tags 2023-05-05 18:23:03 +02:00
docker_windows_amd64.go remove pre-go1.17 build-tags 2023-05-05 18:23:03 +02:00
docker_windows_arm.go remove pre-go1.17 build-tags 2023-05-05 18:23:03 +02:00
docker_windows_arm64.go remove pre-go1.17 build-tags 2023-05-05 18:23:03 +02:00