I think the cleanest solution is to support the file:// scheme or to treat scheme-less urls as local paths.

file:// is the easiest solution, but not the cleanest.

It's confusing vs. faas-cli deploy -f / --yaml local-file, and many other tools people are used to like "kubectl" work with "kubectl apply -f https://andkuebctl apply -f ./some-local-file.yaml`

A mix of the two might work. --url with a local path, with or without a file:// scheme could be accepted and resolve to a local file if it looks like one.

Maybe move from --url to a more generic --store which supports local files or a url, like kubectl and others.

Then add a flag alias from --store to --url for backwards compat and then convert all docs to only reference --store. It is also possible to make --url hidden so that it is supported but doesn't show in the cli --help

I think that could work 👍

Are you interested in contributing it?

Lucas' approach but treading carefully with the word in the new flag.

faas-cli store deploy figlet --store ./functions.json

jars slightly because the same word is a command and a flag. Ultimately, however the file is retrieved its a file:

faas-cli store deploy figlet --file ./functions.json

and

faas-cli store deploy figlet --file https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openfaas/store/master/functions.json

Side note: From a UX / PO perspective I'd suggest that faas-cli template store mirrors whatever behaviour is settled on here

Sure I can do this.

Good point by @rgee0, I originally thought file or url was a bit like showing the details of how it works, but it probably isn't an issue here. It is not likely to be the most popular flag in the CLI :) I will stick with --file