Common UI improvements

[dberenbaum]

Goals for UI:

1. Abstract UI implementation to apply high-level functions/classes to all UI components

• abstract cli ui utilities, move away from logger.info for display #5347 and introduce dvc.io module to consolidate io utilities #5348

2. Establish CLI/UI guidelines

3. Improve formatting, style, and functionality

@skshetry @efiop @pmrowla

[dberenbaum]

Referenced in #5282 (comment): Subcommand should usually be plural

[jorgeorpinel]

What about extracting all user messages to a central location for easy access to the prod team to help with? Could even help for future i18n (more context).

[dberenbaum]

See #5891 for --quiet guidelines

[dberenbaum]

@skshetry Are there other issues that can be linked here?

[skshetry]

Some updates on this - We decided to adopt https://clig.dev as a base guideline for the CLI applications (I would suggest everyone read this). I started going through our commands and fix where we violate this and make some improvements along the way.

I had to start somewhere, so I have chosen data management commands - starting with add. I noticed some performance and reliability issues on add: #6227, #6226, and #6228, which I'll be going to fix, but before I need to do some cleanups.

After that, I'll focus on improving data management commands (add/commit/remove/move/checkout/destroy).
If something bugs you or is odd, please open an issue and assign me. I'll try to fix them as possible.

[skshetry]

Another thing that I'd like to open the discussion is the UI messages for the add.

• The add command is quiet about what is done, at the end, there's only a progress bar (and, an ugly hint). What should it say on success?
• Do we even need a progress bar for a single target to add (eg: dvc add data)?
• Do we need progress bars at all, even for multiple targets?
• How should DVC show progress bars/status on places where it might take a lot of time? eg: recursively adding a large directory, collecting lots of stages, etc?

To compare (and, spark the discussion, here are the asciinema recordings for multiple targets add and single targets add).

Single target

Multiple targets

[dberenbaum]

Another guide for reference: https://primer.style/cli/

[jorgeorpinel]

We decided to adopt https://clig.dev as a base guideline for the CLI applications

p.s. would it be worth giving a quick talk to others on this? E.g. in an all hands meeting or in a bash perhaps (cc @casperdcl)