[swift-build-dev] [swift-evolution] [Review] SE-0085: Package Manager Command Names

[Rob Allen]

> On 10 May 2016, at 16:38, Daniel Dunbar <daniel_dunbar at apple.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On May 10, 2016, at 12:42 AM, Rob Allen via swift-build-dev <swift-build-dev at swift.org> wrote:
>> 
>> I'm not totally sold on `swift package` as the new command though as "package" is an imperative verb like "build" or "test" and implies that if I run it, then it will generate a "package" whereas it will actually do nothing as an additional switch will be required. This requirement to always take a second sub-command makes it different from `swift build` and `swift test` too. Are there any commands to `swift` current that require a sub-command to work?
> 
> I agree with this part about package sounding like an imperative verb. Do you have an alternative proposal that you like better, though? In practice, this confusion will be quickly mitigated as `swift package` simply shows the help.

While I'm thinking about this...

Are there any commands to `swift` that are not package manager commands? If not, then another option is to move all the package manager operations to top level commands of `swift`. e.g. `swift init`, `swift generate-xcodeproj` etc. This solves the discoverability and tab completion between `swift` and `swiftpm` problem completely, and also makes for a sane api of:

$ swift init
$ swift add https://github.com/apple/example-package-playingcard.git
$ swift build
$ swift test


As an aside, anone of the subcommands to `swift` are discoverable because `swift -h` displays "OVERVIEW: Swift compiler" and doesn't imply that it does anything different to `swiftc` which also says "OVERVIEW: Swift compiler" when you do `swift -h`, but has a different set of options :)