[Important] Improve passing of parameters for all tools

[KrauseFx]

Some tools, like sigh can only be passed some of the available command like options, not all of them.

Also, sometimes users want to have a parameter for a tool, for which there is already an environment variable available (fastlane-old/sigh#45)

There needs to be a more unified way:

There are 5 ways to pass configuration to the individual fastlane tools (ordered):

• Command line parameter (e.g. deliver -u felix@krausefx.com)
• Passing options with fastlane
• Configuration file (only for snapshot and deliver)
• Environment variables
• Asking for information if missing

The user should be able to set every option in all 5 ways.

Any other ideas? Concerns?

[KrauseFx]

This would result in one class of each tool, defining all available options, with a short description of what they're for.

We then iterate through all available options and pass it to commander

[joshdholtz]

@KrauseFx How does this effect #28 since that is added listening in an the --env option? I'm all for improving this! Just curious 😁

[dfranzi]

I'm finding this to be particularly important with sigh, as it'd be great to be able to specify the file name and output directory from within fastlane when fetching provisioning profiles.

[KrauseFx]

I completely agree. Any feedback appreciated! I want to get this right when working on this issue.

[dfranzi]

I've just started diving into developing a pipeline with fastlane, so I don't have the best insight into all use cases yet. With sigh in particular, I'd want to be able to define parameters per lane. The usage that I see would involve updating the sigh action to work with parameters in a similar manner to produce. This would enable me to define the parameters inline to the call, or as environment variables externally first.

[KrauseFx]

The current plan is to provide a ConfigurationManager-Class in the fastlane_core, which each individual tool can call with its available options.

From then on, each tool can call the ConfigurationManager and ask for specific values. If there was no command line option given, no configuration in the configuration file and no environment variable, it will ask the user for the value and show information on how to set this value programatically.

Thanks @joshdholtz 👍

[almassapargali]

Hello, I think it may be a little late, since we already make a big use of ENV, but I'd propose to use ENV only for sensitive information.

For other information I think we should take from configuration file, fastlane options, and command line arguments (the latter overwrites former). What do you think of this?

[KrauseFx]

Why wouldn't we also allow passing of any information from the environment?

[almassapargali]

I don't know, just think would be nice to have one place of input.

[almassapargali]

Also maybe use something like this but generalised for all tools?

[almassapargali]

Ok, I'll check out how other established tools (cocoapods, homebrew, etc.) handles this and write back.

[KrauseFx]

Started with the pull request: fastlane-old/fastlane_core#8

Will take a few more days until fully finished 🚀

[KrauseFx]

Everything except for the configuration file is finished 🚀