lxc manpage is incomplete

Bug #1544984 reported by Robie Basak
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
lxd
Fix Released
Unknown
lxd (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Wishlist
Unassigned

Bug Description

Using lxd 0.20-0ubuntu4.1 on Wily.

The lxc manpage only gives me the top level commands. They give me no discoverability - I have to interactively probe the usage lines for subcommands individually. This makes the manpage pretty much useless, as I have to do the interactive probing either way.

Lack of discoverability using the probing method means that I need to type a bunch of commands in order to walk the tree of subcommand help files, instead of just reading through a manpage. If I don't walk the entire tree, I will miss what I need. For example, I tried "lxc file -h" to try and found out how to add a bind mount, not realising that it should be under "lxc config -h" instead. I had to google; instead I expect to be able to find out how to get it to do what I want through the manpages only.

git's manpages are a very good example of how to do this well, IMHO, in particular with its many subcommands.

Expected result: I can discover all functionality (or certainly all major functionality) through manpages alone.

Revision history for this message
Stéphane Graber (stgraber) wrote :

Patches are welcome. We're using help2man to generate our manpages because maintaining them by hand is too much of a pain.

Changed in lxd (Ubuntu):
status: New → Triaged
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
Revision history for this message
Stéphane Graber (stgraber) wrote :

So we have an upstream fix for it which with some tweaking should be able to output one gigantic manpage.

Changed in lxd (Ubuntu):
status: Triaged → Fix Committed
Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

This bug was fixed in the package lxd - 2.11-0ubuntu1

---------------
lxd (2.11-0ubuntu1) zesty; urgency=medium

  * New upstream release (2.11):
    - New "aliases" field in POST /1.0/images
    - Reworked help messages and "lxc manpage" command (LP: #1544984)
    - New "vlan" nic property for "macvlan" devices
    - doc: Add instructions to grow ZFS loop (LP: #1648995)
    - doc: Improve storage doc
    - global: Use RunCommand everywhere
    - i18n: Refresh templates
    - i18n: Update translations from weblate
    - i18n: Update translation templates
    - lxc: Allow --version to be passed with any command
    - lxc: Make help/usage a bit more consistent
    - lxc: Rework for better manpages
    - lxc/image: Show the alias description
    - lxc/profile: Properly implement "profile unset" (LP: #1669772)
    - lxd/containers: Don't use FindProcess, just pass exec.Cmd
    - lxd/containers: Properly revert memory limits on failure
    - lxd/images: Properly return the alias description
    - lxd/images: Refactor code a bit
    - lxd/migration: Actually unset the storage pool if unavailable
    - lxd/migration: Better handle rsync errors (subprocesses)
    - lxd/migration: Set correct pool property for btrfs
    - lxd/migration: Set correct pool property for zfs
    - lxd/migration: Tweak rsync logging a bit
    - lxd/patches: Call tryMount() if not already mounted
    - lxd/patches: Conditionalize lvrename
    - lxd/patches: Delete image db entry if LV is missing
    - lxd/patches: Detect the logical volume size
    - lxd/patches: Fix incorrect btrfs source properties
    - lxd/patches: Handle mixed-storage upgrade
    - lxd/patches: Use MNT_DETACH for lvm
    - lxd/patches: Use RemoveAll() for lvm snapshots dir
    - lxd/storage/btrfs: Correctly handle loop-backed pools
    - lxd/storage/btrfs: Handle custom subvolume paths
    - lxd/storage/dir: Limit valid pool source paths
    - lxd/storage/lvm: Call {pv,vg}scan
    - lxd/storage/lvm: Dumb down functions from methods to functions
    - lxd/storage: Deal with source not being btrfs
    - lxd/storage: Ensure correct pool for snapshots
    - lxd/storage: Harden the btrfs migration code
    - lxd/storage: Report prepareLoopDev() error directly
    - shared/idmap: Fix various issues
    - tests: Add more dir and btrfs tests
    - tests: Improve lvm part of storage tests
  * Use "lxc manpage" to generate the manpages.
  * Update debian/tests/control to pull in lvm2 and thin-provisioning-tools.
  * Include lxd-benchmark in lxd-tools.

 -- Stéphane Graber <email address hidden> Wed, 08 Mar 2017 16:24:35 -0500

Changed in lxd (Ubuntu):
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
Changed in lxd:
status: Unknown → Fix Released
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