dep ensure is semantically confusing

[paddie]

Coming from different vendoring tools for both Go and other languages, it seems to me that the command dep ensure is semantically a bit confusing.

I expected the command to be something along the lines of dep [commit | pull | install] to pull in dependencies from project imports. The ensure command is almost begging for an ekstra argument, such as dependencies or vendored which is not the case.

This is not really a feature request, I was just interested in knowing if I was the only one.

[sdboyer]

Yeah, we went round and round on names. A lot.

The idea of "ensure" is roughly, "ensure that all my local states - code tree, manifest, lock, and vendor - are in sync with each other." When arguments are passed, it becomes "ensure this argument is satisfied, along with synchronization between all my local states."

We opted for this approach because we came to the conclusion that allowing the tool to perform partial work/exit in intermediate states ended up creating a tool that had more commands, had far more possible valid exit and input states, and was generally full of footguns. In this approach, the user has most of the same ultimate control, but exercises it differently (by modifying the code/manifest and re-running dep ensure).

Still, this is something that belongs in FAQ/docs, for sure 😄

[afeld]

Now present in the FAQ - I think this issue is good to close.