unknown argument makes no suggestions

[gilescope]

What went wrong?

If you used --if-exist rather than the correct --if-exists for SAVE ARTIFACT, the error gives no hint that the argument you have used is very similar one that it knows about:

Earthfile:994:4 invalid SAVE ARTIFACT arguments [--if-exist /scan_reports/* AS LOCAL scan_reports/]: unknown flag `if-exist'

These kinds of tweaks make developer experience far better for newbies.

What should have happened?

It should have suggested maybe you mean --if-exists?

What earthly version?

0.8

Buildkit Logs

No response

Other Helpful Information

No response

[kmannislands]

Yeah indeed. I also personally find the formatting of most errors a bit hard to parse. I think we can take inspiration for languages/tools that do this sort of thing really well.

Would be good to put together a list of common errors with:

• Current state
• A "mock up" of the output we'd ideally like

And see what we can do to really make errors first-rate.

In this example, I think ideal would be something like:

  error[E0142]: unknown flag to SAVE ARTIFACT: `--if-exist`
    --> Earthfile:994:4
      |
  989 | scan:
  990 |     FROM +base
      ⋮
  993 |     COPY +scan-code/reports /scan_reports
  994 |     SAVE ARTIFACT --if-exist /scan_reports/* AS LOCAL scan_reports/
      |                   ^^^^^^^^^^
      |
     = help: did you mean `--if-exists`?
     = docs: https://docs.earthbuild.dev/docs/earthfile#save-artifact

• Error code, more clearly delineated error message
• Surrounding lines w/line numbers
  • Importantly, the target this was part of
• Help suggestion like you mentioned
• Link to docs for the relevant function

[gilescope]

Also " Incorrect Usage: flag provided but not defined: -p" should suggest -P really.