Generate Structs for Flags or Output machine-reable description for flags

[kakkoyun]

To be able to conveniently generate type-safe configurations for Thanos. This could be utilized by the configuration projects (e.g kube-thanos or similar projects). We would like to have structs that define flags and configuration for Thanos.

Flags could be generated from those structs or structs can be generated from existing flags.
Any change should be seamless to users, we shouldn't change any behaviour.

Any ideas? WDYT?

@thanos-io/thanos-maintainers

related: thanos-io/kube-thanos#184

[brancz]

Self-describing-binaries is kind of how I see this. I like this idea a lot. I personally think just a json blob that describes the subcommands and flags of those is a really fantastic start. Little can do a lot here I believe.

[kakkoyun]

@brancz Great idea! Having a subcommand to output this would be an amazing convenience. I wonder if something similar already exists?

[roidelapluie]

Something like /~https://github.com/alecthomas/kong might help you.

[roidelapluie]

There is also /~https://github.com/bwplotka/flagarize

[kakkoyun]

@bwplotka's gonna kill me how I've forgotten about flagarize 🙈

[bwplotka]

Nah, fllagarize is dead 🙃

I would vote for /~https://github.com/openproto/protoconfig as this was created exactly for this purpose.

[bwplotka]

I just had chat with @smintz, co-creator of similar project /~https://github.com/protoconf/protoconf, I think we plan to join forces into going for proto based configuration (alongside flags ofc)

[stale]

Hello 👋 Looks like there was no activity on this issue for the last two months.
Do you mind updating us on the status? Is this still reproducible or needed? If yes, just comment on this PR or push a commit. Thanks! 🤗
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[stale]

Closing for now as promised, let us know if you need this to be reopened! 🤗