Confused by the `config init --dest-dir` functionality

[pillo79]

Describe the request

As I understand there are 3 ways to initialize the CLI config:

• arduino-cli config init will initialize the config in ~/.arduino15/arduino-cli.yaml and use ~/.arduino15 as data store;
• arduino-cli config init --dest-file cfg.yaml will initialize the config in cfg.yaml and use ~/.arduino15 as data store;
• arduino-cli config init --dest-dir cfg will create a cfg folder, initialize the config in cfg/arduino-cli.yaml and STILL use ~/.arduino15 as data store.

The first way is the generic default.
The second is a variant that allows you to have a different CLI config but share the package repos.
The third works exactly like the second but creates an (otherwise unused) directory. I was really surprised by this as I thought it would initialize a fully separate CLI environment. That is really useful for CI/testing purposes.

What is the use case of the config init --dest-dir option? Can this be edited to automatically point directories.data and directories.download to the specified folder?

Describe the current behavior

Currently to achieve a separate environment, the config has to be initialized and then the directories have to be manually set via arduino-cli config set commands.

Arduino CLI version

0.35.2

Operating system

Linux

Operating system version

--

Additional context

No response

Issue checklist

• I searched for previous requests in the issue tracker
• I verified the feature was still missing when using the nightly build
• My request contains all necessary details

[cmaglie]

Hi @pillo79

I think the original idea of config init --dest-file cfg.yaml was to match the global flag --config-file cfg.yaml.
BTW the same did not happen for the config init --dest-dir cfg that has no global flag counter part --config-dir ....

Maybe a better strategy is to add a global --config-dir my/config/dir flag that does two things:

• sets the configuration file to my/config/dir/arduino-cli.yaml
• sets the default data dir to my/config/dir, so it will be used to store platforms and downloads (note that the directory will not be written in the generated configuration, but just taken as "default").

WDYT?

[pillo79]

I don't think that is enough, since the generated file specifies these paths explicitly, and it would still override the default set by --config-dir later.

However, it would be fine if doing a config init --dest-dir cfg --config-dir cfg would result in the paths being "set to a custom default" and then written in cfg/arduino-cli.yaml.

[cmaglie]

I don't think that is enough, since the generated file specifies these paths explicitly

This behavior is changed from the CLI 1.0.0, now the config file contains only the required field:

$ arduino-cli config init --dest-dir xxxxx
Config file written to: /home/cmaglie/xxxxx/arduino-cli.yaml
$ ls -lR xxxxx/
xxxxx/:
totale 4
-rw-r--r-- 1 cmaglie cmaglie 39 lug 30 17:07 arduino-cli.yaml
$ cat xxxxx/arduino-cli.yaml 
board_manager:
    additional_urls: []
$ 

at this point it could be used as:

$ arduino-cli core install --config-dir xxxxx
...do everything in xxxxx since the default data.dir is now set to xxxxx via --config-dir...

[pillo79]

Sorry didn't check the latest CLI behavior. I think this would be great! 😄 👍