Directions and Priorities for pywbemtools 0.9.0

[andy-maier]

For information:

• Open issues targeting 0.9.0
• Open issues not targeting any milestone

Items for 0.9.0:

• Ongoing items in each release:

  • Resolve open bugs
  • Improve test coverage for 0.9.0 (issue Test coverage for 0.9.0 #798) - OPEN
  • Expand use of documentation index (issue Expand use of documentation index #598) - PARTLY DONE - CLOSED
  • Work down TODOs (issue Work down code/docs TODOs for 0.9.0 #799) - OPEN
  • Review current experimental functionality for finalization:
    • None

• Cleanup:

  • Cleanup of PYWBEMCLI_* env variable definitions (issue Cleanup of PYWBEMCLI_* env variable definitions #658) - WONT
  • Cannot pass WBEM URI with quotes through test stdin (issue Cannot pass WBEM URI with quotes through test stdin #387) - DONE

• Testing:

  • Install test for Windows and CygWin (issue Install test for Windows and CygWin #607) - WONT

• Mock support:

  • Define a container functionality to organize information to define a mock server (issue Define a container functionality to organize information to define a mock server. #674) P1 - MOVED to next release

• Ease of use:

  • Find means to show classes filtered by characteristics, part 2 (issue Find means to show classes filtered by characteristics #447) P1 - DONE
  • Add capability to include a comment for connection definitions in connections file (issue Add capability to include a comment for connection definitions in connections file #761) - WONT
  • Improve and possibly vendor-in the tabulate package to get required functionality (issue Improve and possibly vendor-in the tabulate package to get required functionality #701) - MOVED to next release
  • Add more Qualifier filters (issue Add more Qualifier filters #682) - DONE
  • Define the cmd line options into groups for the help output (issue Define the cmd line options into groups for the help output #672) - DONE (PARTLY)

• Namespaces:

  • Add support for namespace commands (issue Add support for namespace commands #877) - DONE

• Profiles:

  • Expand the centralinsts cmd to use the shrub to display information on that central instance (issue Extend the profiles so that we can show a tree of profiles #481) - MOVED to next release

• Output formats:

  • Add JSON as output format (issue Add JSON output format #184) P1 - WONT
  • Add table format for class object output (issue Add table format for class object output #249) P2 - MOVED to next release

• Other:

  • Support getting operation statistics from the server (this was implemented in at least pegasus and j server) (issue Support for getting operation statistics from the WBEM server (and statistics command group) #588) - DONE

Candidate items for after 0.9.0:

• Cleanup:

  • Remove changes required by click-repl to make all help= strings unicode (issue Remove changes required by click-repl to make all help= strings unicode #691)

• Testing:

  • Refactor the tests so that we run more tests in interactive mode. This would significantly increase the speed of running the tests (most of the time for each test is pywbemcli startup). (issue Run more tests in interactive mode to reduce test time #949)

• Ease of use:

  • Expand class tree to show superclasses and subclasses (issue Expand class tree to show superclasses and subclasses #449)
  • Use the wild card concept now used on INSTANCENAME for the value component of other options and arguments:
    • server profiles and server centralinsts. (issue Extend use of wild card concept to other arguments #950)
    • --namespace option
    • --name general argument to get name of persistent connection
  • Implement completion of cmd line arguments and options of the command line (issue Implement completion of cmd line arguments and options of the command line #482) - OPEN - requires Click 8

• Output formats:

  • Add Latex format (issue Add Latex format for output in table format #185) COMMENT/KS. Does latex really matter unless we get it for free with some tool?
  • Consider a machine-readable form of output that would allow command redirection at least at the shell level. Note that click itself does not really support the idea of redirection in the interactive mode (output of one command available as input to the next command) but we could use the click context as a way to pass results to input in the interactive mode (Which would make the command mode different than the interactive mode). Some examples of usage might be: Run a command to get the namespaces and then run anther command on all of those namespaces.The easiest idea for this is the processing of things like connection names, instancenames, classnames, and namespace names. or lists of the same. (issue Machine-readable form of output for piping #951)

• Indications: QUESTION/KS: How important are indications and subscriptions to pywbemcli. I do not know

  • Possible indication listener (run as background process or separate tool) (issue Add an indication listener to pywbemtools #430)
  • Subscription management (issue Add the subscription manager to pywbemcli #4)

• Maintaining server state in interactive mode:

  • Consider maintaining some information between commands in the interactive mode beyond what is maintained by the Server class. Remember that profiles and namespaces are maintained in the Server class instance as long as that object exists. ex. classes by namespace. Thus we would extend our pywbem_server to allow it to maintain more information. The information could include at least class names by namespace (partly addressed by issue Cache classes or at least classname retrieved from a server #483)
  • In the interactive mode consider maintaining connection information in memory when different connections are selected so that if a server was selected, any previous current connection would not be completely cleaned (today we clean each connection as it is selected). Some ideas are stash of class names or classes by namespace. Maintain the concept of a current thing; current class, current instance that would be applied to commands (partly addressed by issue Cache all information about an active server when switching connection #484)

• Other:

  • Add command to get information on DMTF schema used by server (issue Add command to get information on DMTF schema used by server #444)
  • Analyze cimcli and SBLIM's wbemcli against pywbemcli (issue Investigation: Analyze cimcli and SBLIM's wbemcli against pywbemcli #451)
  • Extend pywbemcli so that plugins representing new commands and groups could be added by users (issue Support for user plugins in pywbemcli #587)
  • Specify property type in instance create to avoid class lookup (issue Specify property type in instance create to avoid class lookup #187)
  • Support embedded instances as input (issue Support embedded instances as input #589)
  • Add the capability to inspect jobs (issue Add the capability to inspect jobs #5)