[MPH-32] "medium" mode should be the default for help:describe

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 2.1
• Assignee: Siveton Vincent
• Reporter: Daniel Fabulich
• Created: 04/Feb/08 17:31
• Updated: 28/Aug/08 05:23
• Resolved: 28/Aug/08 05:23

Description

Right now if you "mvn help:describe -Dplugin=compiler" you'll see this:

[INFO] Plugin: 'org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-compiler-plugin:2.0.2'
-----------------------------------------------
Group Id:  org.apache.maven.plugins
Artifact Id: maven-compiler-plugin
Version:     2.0.2
Goal Prefix: compiler
Description:

Maven Plugins

This doesn't include the list of goals in this plugin. Similarly, if you "mvn help:describe -Dplugin=compiler -Dmojo=compile" you'll see this:

===============================================
Goal: 'compile'
Description:
Compiles application sources
===============================================

This doesn't describe any of the plugin parameters.

The problem here is that the "default" amount of information shown by help:describe is just way too minimal, requiring the user to be clever enough to add -Dmedium or -Dfull to get the information that they'd see for free if they looked at the website.

-Dmedium should be the default mode; if people just want to see the minimal amount of information, we could add a new mode called -Dminimal or -Dshort that would include less information. Overall, IMO our objective should be that running mvn help:describe should, by default, give approximately the same information you'd get by browsing to a plugin's site.