Usability of 'samba-tool domain provision'

[Rowland Penny]

On 04/05/16 14:44, Alexander Bokovoy wrote:
> On Wed, 04 May 2016, Rowland Penny wrote:
>> On 04/05/16 13:40, Alexander Bokovoy wrote:
>>> On Wed, 04 May 2016, Rowland Penny wrote:
>>>> On 04/05/16 12:16, Alexander Bokovoy wrote:
>>>>> On Wed, 04 May 2016, Peter C. Kelly wrote:
>>>>>> Andreas said:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> This documents issues I
>>>>>>> found during provisioning. samba-tool is far away from being user friendly.
>>>>>>> a) It isn't clear what domain is from 'samba-tool domain provison --help'
>>>>>> I have raised bug 11894, and attached a patch which addresses this
>>>>>> point as per Rowland's suggested wording.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> b) The --realm option is essential but at the end of the help ...
>>>>>> The reason that the realm is way down the bottom is that it is under a
>>>>>> heading "Samba Common Options", along with configFile debuglevel and
>>>>>> option.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> What is currently holding me up from developing the second trivial
>>>>>> patch is a need for a bit more clarity on how this --help output
>>>>>> should look.  It seems to me that if the --domain parameter is
>>>>>> compulsory, then the heading text should say so,
>>>>>> and that if a realm has to be specified (or read in from an existing
>>>>>> conf file) then perhaps that should be mentioned in the introductory
>>>>>> text as well.
>>>>> It would, perhaps, be good to have it in both categories to avoid
>>>>> changing common options' help.
>>>>>
>>>> It doesn't need to be in both categories, if you do an interactive
>>>> provision, there is this:
>>>>
>>>>               realm = ask("Realm", default)
>>>>               if realm in (None, ""):
>>>>                   raise CommandError("No realm set!")
>>>>
>>>> If you specify everything with the command, there is this:
>>>>
>>>>               realm = sambaopts._lp.get('realm')
>>>>               if realm is None:
>>>>                   raise CommandError("No realm set!")
>>>>
>>>> So, if you don't provide the 'realm', it refuses to continue and tells you
>>>> why.
>>> There is a difference between running the tool and reading the
>>> documentation. ;) If we can improve expectations by pointing out that
>>> realm and other options are really not options here but required
>>> arguments, it would save some time to people who want to automate.
>>> Manual page for samba-tool is very short on what could be expected from
>>> the user in specific commands, unfortunately. The help output isn't
>>> helping too.
>>>
>> Well, if you run 'samba-tool domain provision --help', you get this at the
>> top:
>>
>> Usage: samba-tool domain provision [options]
>>
>> Provision a domain.
>>
>>
>> There then follows the list of options.
>>
>> I am sure that 'Provision a domain' can be expanded on, starting with ', you
>> must supply the realm name.'
>>
> Yes, and even more, telling that at least realm, domain, and some other
> options could be specified explicitly or will be asked for if they are
> missing. Now, the issue I see is that current help makes no difference
> between options which are required (i.e. they are not really options)
> and therefore will be asked for if they were not specified and options
> which tune default behavior but otherwise aren't necessary.
>
> Right now there is no way to know about it other than running the tool
> and learning the hard way by failing installation or making wrong
> deployment. This is pretty bad user experience.
>

The problem is 'provision' works in two ways, 'interactive' and by 
giving all the answers to the command. This means you cannot make 
'--domain' a requirement without breaking 'interactive'. If we go down 
the line of making things compulsory, then we will probably have to 
remove the 'interactive' parts, do we want to do this ?

I totally agree that some thing needs to be done to make the user 
experience better.

Rowland