computer configure --non-interactive asks for safe interval despite default value

[ltalirz]

When running verdi computer configure local localhost interactively, I get a default value for the connection cooldown time.

However, this throws an exception:

$ verdi computer configure local localhost -n
Usage: verdi computer configure local [OPTIONS] COMPUTER

Error: Missing option "--safe-interval".

This is unexpected, since it should simply take the default value in non-interactive mode.

I thought that was an easy fix and started looking into the code, only to encounter the fact that the cli setup for transport plugins is really convoluted.

In particular, the options are translated from some custom internal key/value representation

aiida-core/aiida/transports/plugins/ssh.py

Lines 63 to 77 in a825865

	_valid_connect_options = [
	('username', {'prompt': 'User name', 'help': 'user name for the computer', 'non_interactive_default': True}),
	('port', {'option': options.PORT, 'prompt': 'port Nr', 'non_interactive_default': True}),
	('look_for_keys', {'switch': True, 'prompt': 'Look for keys', 'help': 'switch automatic key file discovery on / off', 'non_interactive_default': True}),
	('key_filename', {'type': AbsolutePathParamType(dir_okay=False, exists=True), 'prompt': 'SSH key file', 'help': 'Manually pass a key file if default path is not set in ssh config', 'non_interactive_default': True}),
	('timeout', {'type': int, 'prompt': 'Connection timeout in s', 'help': 'time in seconds to wait for connection before giving up', 'non_interactive_default': True}),
	('allow_agent', {'switch': True, 'prompt': 'Allow ssh agent', 'help': 'switch to allow or disallow ssh agent', 'non_interactive_default': True}),
	('proxy_command', {'prompt': 'SSH proxy command', 'help': 'SSH proxy command', 'non_interactive_default': True}), # Managed 'manually' in connect
	('compress', {'switch': True, 'prompt': 'Compress file transfers', 'help': 'switch file transfer compression on / off', 'non_interactive_default': True}),
	('gss_auth', {'type': bool, 'prompt': 'GSS auth', 'help': 'GSS auth for kerberos', 'non_interactive_default': True}),
	('gss_kex', {'type': bool, 'prompt': 'GSS kex', 'help': 'GSS kex for kerberos', 'non_interactive_default': True}),
	('gss_deleg_creds', {'type': bool, 'prompt': 'GSS deleg_creds', 'help': 'GSS deleg_creds for kerberos', 'non_interactive_default': True}),
	('gss_host', {'prompt': 'GSS host', 'help': 'GSS host for kerberos', 'non_interactive_default': True}),
	# for Kerberos support through python-gssapi
	]

aiida-core/aiida/transports/transport.py

Lines 57 to 64 in a825865

	_common_auth_options = [(
	'safe_interval', {
	'type': float,
	'prompt': 'Connection cooldown time (s)',
	'help': 'Minimum time interval in seconds between consecutive connection openings',
	'callback': validate_positive_number
	}
	)]

to click using a lot of "machinery".
Is this really necessary?

This isn't high-priority but couldn't we just use the simpler approach from data plugins, where a plugin simply adds a new command to an existing group?

Mentioning @giovannipizzi @sphuber for comment.

[sphuber]

This was implemented by @DropD to automatically generate the click sub commands based on the _valid_connect_options and _common_auth_options attributes that can be defined on the Transport sub class. I am not 100% certain on the motivation, but I imagine that it was a way to deduplicate code as well as making the generation of new Transport plugins easier with respect to adding also the configure end point. Maybe the latter is now obsolete since we could maybe provide the aiida.cmdline.computer.configure entry point category that people could use.