At some point everything we know of SAFE becomes a simple concept, of that which is SAFE and that which is not. That is, the network is considered a platform, on which you are or otherwise are not. The KISS principal of marketing, is rooted in the user does not need to think… and marketing to everyone, is helped by being familiar and then obvious.
I wonder SAFE would benefit from having stated intent for the future of any design, that the UI capability draws on which already exists as most familiar.
So, having a CLI that is familiar, will help adoption, with effort put to WHAT is done and not HOW it is done.
With the suggestion already of cat and rsync, I wondered that “wfetch” is an odd name, where perhaps that should be the familiar wget.
Could SAFE have a stated intent, that the core CLI commands should be based on what Linux already does.
$ safe cat "safe://bbkulcax6ulw7ovqhpsindkybsum4tusmvuc7ovtr2bu5gj6m4ugtu7euh"
$ safe grep -rl 'wfetch' / | xargs sed -i 's#wfetch#wget#g'
$ safe wget "safe://helloworld"
$ safe ls -1
$ safe ls -B
$ safe man safe
To be expected that the CLI already most familiar, follows from Linux rather than random other OS.
A SAFE user’s expectation can then be understood, as simply “that which Linux does - or not at all.”
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This is a tricky one. Disregarding whether emulating POSIX (for example) is good marketing, we should not make implied claims of compatibility (through naming) unless we are offering true compatibility.
This would confuse and frustrate users rather than ease adoption.
This may be the reason for different naming, I don’t know.
I have had a go at compatibility via SAFE Drive and we saw there how differences between reasonable expectation and how the implementation actually behaved can be a problem, at the same time as the ability to use the CLI and its normal commands was a great benefit.
Personally I would love to see compatible commands, but I think they need to be as compatible as it makes sense to make them, or it will not advance our aims.
How well we can do this with the SAFE CLI will determine how useful it will or won’t be to continue with and update SAFE Drive, so this is of particular interest to me and also no doubt, people who liked SAFE Drive.
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I’m not suggesting being overly ambitious with it but simply where simple commands can map, sticking to what is familiar, helps new users… even if not all switches and functions are available.
It’s not obvious to me what SAFE behaviour would be off target from expectation, for basic commands… there’s no expectation that all bash commands will work. Where significant difference is forced, then a new command name, perhaps is appropriate.
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