Proposal for a new command line tool “leap-util”

[vladtr]

Nodeos is getting cluttered with commands. These commands should be spun out into a separate utility leap-util per:

https://github.com/eosnetworkfoundation/mandel/issues/697

More to that, we already have tools such eosio-blocklog containing all-blocklog functionality that should be integrated into one leap-util tool for clarity and simplicity of use.

Having a single “entry point” to a maintenance tool hopefully will make it easier for users.

[stephenpdeos]

From today's discussion

Proposal discussion questions:

1. In order to use bash autocomplete, a patched or forked version of CLI11 needs to be used. We need to decide what will be a right approach.

Yes, we want to use bash autocomplete. For now, we will plan to fork a version of CLI11. Over time, there is a chance the customized aspects we're using may get merged into CLI11's main.

2. Also for autocomplete, a config script for bash needs to be added to installation step for *.deb packages. Should we require bash-completion package as mandatory dependency for leap, or if its not installed on user system, just ignore/warn about it and autocomplete wont work

This should be an optional dependency in debian package.

3. Since we would be using CLI11 already in 2 places and potentially other cli utils will use it in future, it should be probably shaped into library vs one header file.

This should just be one library used by things like cleos and leap-util

Next steps:

1. What does the visual experience look like for leap-util for some examples of commands we know will be used?

• Vlad to mock up examples of a few commonly used cleos commands to illustrate anticipated experience.

2. What is the full scope that leap-util encompasses?

• Vlad to incorporate blocklog scope into proposal for asynchronous review
• Vlad to take on OCI's work on snapshot command to be incorporated into leap-util (snapshot json support mandel#151, cleanup and improve json snapshot support mandel#771)
• Stephen to create research spike to assess which commands across cleos, nodeos, etc that should be incorporated into leap-util scope and why.

[vladtr]

Addressing "Next Steps":

1. Examples of help / help-all options:
   

Autocomplete example (pressing after command/subcommand, entering first letter of subcommand and -- for params). This is animated gif but for some reason runs at 1/2 speed, apologies for it being slow:

2. eosio-blocklog draftly ported as "blocklog" subcommand (please see this branch: https://github.com/AntelopeIO/leap/tree/leap-util).