We all make mistakes. But big mistakes can cause big headaches! Suppose you're writing a utility to update production data for a launch. Before making changes to production data, you want to perform a dry run to validate the expected changes. In your excitement, you forget to include the --dry_run flag in your command:
$ /scripts/credit_accounts --amount=USD10 # Oops, I forgot to include --dry_run |
You realize your mistake too late. Safe flag defaults can prevent a simple mistake from turning into a major outage:
Flag has unsafe default: |
cliArgs.addBoolFlag(name="dry_run", default=False, help="If set, print change summary, but do NOT change data.") |
Flag has safe default: |
cliArgs.addBoolFlag(name="dry_run", default=True, help="If set, print change summary, but do NOT change data.") |
Safety depends on context: When defining flags, choose the default that minimizes the cost of potential mistakes. This might involve defaulting to a "dry" run, asking for user confirmation before irreversible actions, requiring a confirmation flag on the command line, or other strategies. If you’re writing documentation that contains commands, always set values to minimize the damage if run blindly:
Flag in documentation has unsafe default: |
## How to commit changes
Use this command to commit changes. Use --dry_run to test and compute and report changes.
```shell /scripts/credit_accounts --amount=[value] --filter=[conditions] ``` |
Flag in documentation has safe default: |
## How to commit changes
Use this command to compute and report changes. Use --nodry_run to commit the changes.
```shell /scripts/credit_accounts --amount=[value] --filter=[conditions] ``` |
