Skip to content

Watch.Aspire tool does not provide meaningful help #53697

@karolz-ms

Description

@karolz-ms

Repro steps

  1. Install Watch.Aspire tool:

    dotnet tool install --global Microsoft.DotNet.HotReload.Watch.Aspire --version 10.0.201

    (as per https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.DotNet.HotReload.Watch.Aspire/10.0.201).

  2. Microsoft.DotNet.HotReload.Watch.Aspire --help

Expected

The tool outputs short description of its purpose and information about invocation arguments and parameters it can take (and what they do).

Actual

Unhandled exception. System.InvalidOperationException: Option '--sdk' is required.
   at System.CommandLine.Binding.ArgumentConverter.GetValueOrDefault[T](ArgumentConversionResult result)
   at System.CommandLine.Parsing.OptionResult.GetValueOrDefault[T]()
   at System.CommandLine.Parsing.SymbolResult.GetRequiredValue[T](Option`1 option)
   at System.CommandLine.ParseResult.GetRequiredValue[T](Option`1 option)
   at Microsoft.DotNet.Watch.DotNetWatchOptions.TryParse(String[] args, DotNetWatchOptions& options) in /_/src/sdk/src/BuiltInTools/Watch.Aspire/DotNetWatchOptions.cs:line 70
   at Program.<Main>$(String[] args) in /_/src/sdk/src/BuiltInTools/Watch.Aspire/Program.cs:line 4
   at Program.<Main>(String[] args)

@tmat argued that the tool is not really meant for direct human use so the help response is low priority, but the --help invocation is the very first thing that an AI tool tried with Watch.Aspire when I was building an app that was using it, and then AI spent a lot of tokens trying to figure out how to use the tool. So I think we should do better.

CC @DustinCampbell

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

Labels

Area-Watchdotnet-watchuntriagedRequest triage from a team member

Type

No fields configured for Bug.

Projects

No projects

Milestone

No milestone

Relationships

None yet

Development

No branches or pull requests

Issue actions