Consider aliasing `cargo new --library` to `cargo new --lib` rather than throwing an error for it

[kayagokalp]

Problem

Currently if a cargo user wants to create a library project, they need to use cargo new --lib and cargo new --library throws an error with a nice error message:

error: unexpected argument '--library' found

  tip: a similar argument exists: '--lib'

Usage: cargo new --lib <path>

For more information, try '--help'.

But --library and --lib means the same thing and I feel like there would not be an ambiguity if we also accept --library.

I would argue that it would feel more natural to some people.

Proposed Solution

If there are no strong reasons to not do that, I think we can also accept --library as a valid argument and basically make sure that cargo new --library and cargo new --lib actually does the same thing.

This can be further expanded --bin and --binary.

Notes

No response

[weihanglo]

Thanks for the idea.

I feel like the error message is quite clear to route you to the right argument. Also, bin and lib are already used everywhere in other subcommands, Cargo.toml, as well as rustc.

I lean towards not adding clever aliases at this moment, in order to reduce the overhead for both users and developers.

[epage]

Agreed. When I first read this, I thought it was for the other way around, which made sense to me. For better or worse, the rust ecosystem uses a lot of abbreviations.

If the existing clap message wasn't useful, we would have instead wanted to make it more useful at a later point, like when clap-rs/clap#4706 is implemented. Since it is useful, I don't see something to do here.

[arlosi]

Agreed. Since the error message suggests the correct flag, I think we can close this.

Thank you for the suggestion.