why-tree.md

Zen: the choices we made

Why commands and env key-values are in tree form

In fact, most command line tools choose 2~3 depth sub-command organizating, for example:

$> tiup cluster start
$> tiup cluster deploy

The differences are little:

• Ticat join the command path with . into an id like cluster.start
• Ticat has unlimit depth

The reason is to deal with huge number of commands, ticat is a platform with huge amount of commands from different authors, the tree form provides a namespace mechanism to avoid command name conflictings.

The branch path could be used for a specific concept, the authors provide tools in this sub-tree, and the uses can explore this branch for specific tools.

On the end-user side, looking through the command tree to find what we want is not sugguested, searching by keywords is a better way.

The reasons are the same in env key-values.