BallotMaker CLI commands

[stratofax]

Ballotmaker executes on the command line like this:

ballotmaker

Currently, the code supports --help and --version options. The software also needs to recognize additional commands, like git does. What are these commands and what do they do?

Some possible examples:

• validate: validate an EDF by reading it and writing out a copy, effectively running the data through NISTLib validation.
• config: answer prompts to set options to generate a set of ballots (input and output directories, stylesheet, etc.)
• style: create or edit a stylesheet for ballots: select fonts, number of columns, page size, margins, etc.
• make: make all the ballots specified by the EDF provided.
• demo: demonstrate BallotMaker using default values and a demo EDF.

Examples

ballotmaker validate --edf ~/elections/sample.json
ballotmaker config
ballotmaker make --config ~/elections/config.json

Questions

• Are these command names clear and unambiguous?
• What other commands should ballotmaker support?

[stratofax]

I was going to implement validate first, but NISTlib has already been validated elsewere, so I'm going to go straight to generate new ballots.

[stratofax]

I renamed the generate command to make (as in "ballotmaker) and created a branch for this code.

[stratofax]

What should the validate command do? Should it be replaced or subsumed into a summarize command?

This question is based on a thread on a recent PR: Extraction code validates, but tests fail by stratofax · Pull Request #113 · TrustTheVote-Project/BallotLab

See the first reply below for the text of the original thread.

[stratofax]

@ion-oset says:

At this point in it's evolution I think this function has changed enough that the name "validate_edf" is misleading. I would expect the command to tell me if the EDF itself is valid or not. But the output is extracted election data for ballots, with validation just a side effect.

No need to change it for milestone 2, just noting for later.

@stratofax replies:

What I'd like the validate command to do is just to run through the process of reading the EDF, then using the existing logging statements, just report what it finds in the EDF (contest count, etc.). What do you think?

@ion-oset says:

That output sounds useful but it isn't validation. How about summarize or summary?