586003 - ProfileManager should have a command line interface

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Testing Graveyard :: ProfileManager, enhancement)

Description

[Jeff Hammel]

Currently, profilemanager takes up to one argument, the application to be run (or, if omitted, firefox is assumed).  profilemanager should have a full CLI.  This will serve several needs:

 - automation:  with this in place, profilemanager can sensibly run in scripts automatically

 - testing: currently, profilemanager has no tests.  Having a command line interface at least allows easy integration tests to be written

 - CLI users:  often, particularly for "expert users" (and really, the audience is mostly expert users), a user will want to do a specific task with profile manager vs. having the whole program functionality exposed as a GUI.

profilemanager will have a command structure that looks like this:

profilemanager [global options] command <args> [command options]

global options will be those that apply to all commands, such as --app=firefox

command is one of the functions that profileManager.js performs: rename, backup, new, clone, make-default, restore, etc.

<args> are mandatory arguments to the command.  This will usually include the name of the profile and e.g. the new name of the profile for the rename function.

[command options] are optional arguments for a particular command, e.g. --date="January 3, 2010" for the restore command.

I imagine this as primarily a front-end to the class in profileManager.js.  If other functionality was needed, that could be added too.

Comment 1

[Jeff Hammel]

This is done in basic form, so I'm going to close this bug (and, as usual, file follow-up requests separately). Commands don't yet have options, but most of the infrastructure is in place for them so they can be added as needed. Global options are done.  The following commands are implemented:

 backups  list profile backups
 copy     copy a profile
 create   create a new profile
 delete   delete a profile
 help     get help on a command
 list     list profiles

The following commands could be done:

// - restore ... a profile from backup                                          
// - backup ... a profile                                                       
// - rename ... a profile                                                       
// - default ... make a profile the default, or display the default             
// - check ... check profiles for errors                                        
// - info ... information about a profile, presumedly in `Key: value` form