chore/deprecate-unused-commands

[bwalsh]

Deprecation of Unused Commands

This issue formalizes the decision to remove untested or unused commands and requests maintainers to take action as outlined above.

Context

Several commands in the git-drs tool are either untested, incomplete, or have been made obsolete by native git or Git LFS functionalities. Maintaining these unused commands may cause confusion or redundant code management.

Available Commands

• help: Help about any command
• init: Initialize repo for git-drs
• remote: Manage remote DRS server configs
• pre-push-prepare: [RUN VIA GIT LFS] Pre-push hook to update DRS objects
• transfer: [RUN VIA GIT LFS] Register LFS files into gen3 during git push
• query: Query DRS server by DRS ID
• version: Get version

Untested, Incomplete:

The following commands are not ready for end user use.

• add-ref: Add a reference to an existing DRS object via URI
• add-url: Add a file to the Git DRS repo using an S3 URL
• transfer-ref: [RUN VIA GIT LFS] Handle transfers of existing DRS object into git during git push

To be deprecated or removed

The following commands are untested, incomplete, or redundant and should be deprecated:

Untested, For Deprecation:

• create-cache: create a local version of a file manifest containing DRS URIs (left over from Anvil demo)
• download: Download file using file object ID (duplicate of git lfs pull)
• fetch: fetch DRS objects from remote (DRS is not a user facing API)
• list: List DRS entities from server (DRS is not a user facing API)
• list-config: Display the current configuration (duplicate of git config --list)
• list-project: List DRS entities from server (DRS is not a user facing API)
• push: Push local objects to DRS server (duplicate of git push)
• register: Register all pending DRS objects with indexd (duplicate of git push)

Rationale

• Many of the above commands duplicate existing git or git-lfs functionality, or were added as demonstrations and are no longer maintained.
• The DRS interface is not intended to be directly exposed to the user for many of these operations.
• Removing these commands will improve maintainability and reduce possible confusion.

Requested Action

• Remove or mark as deprecated the following commands:
  • add-ref, add-url, transfer-ref, create-cache, download, fetch, list, list-config, list-project, push, register
• Update documentation and help output to reflect removals/deprecations.
• Clearly communicate changes to downstream consumers.

[bwalsh]

    - name: Run tests
      run: go test -v -race $(go list ./... | grep -v 'tests/integration' | grep -v 'client/indexd/tests')
      run: go test -v -race $(go list ./... | grep -v '/cmd/addurl$')
https://github.com/apps/copilot-pull-request-reviewer AI
[12 hours ago](https://github.com/calypr/git-drs/pull/197#discussion_r2766775769)
Test exclusion pattern changed from excluding specific test paths to excluding the entire cmd/addurl package. This is overly broad and will prevent all tests in cmd/addurl from running in CI, not just problematic ones. Consider a more targeted exclusion or fix the tests instead.```

[matthewpeterkort]

I agree with removing all commands listed except fetch and push.

Those commands are useful when you need to clone a repo, import the indexd records from that drs server, and push the indexd records to another drs server. This cannot be done with stock git-drs currently.

There needs to be a way to move datasets from dev to prod. Without this type of functionality git-drs cannot be used to move existing datasets between gen3 instances making it useless for QA/procuring datasets to collaborators.

Perhaps these commands can be hidden in the cli so that users will not know that they exist but they should exist somewhere otherwise it will be impossible to devops datasets between instances without duplicating the git repo + re-uploading the files which is silly.