Retag cmd, cli, terminal, and terminal.app into command-line

Question

command-line probably is/should be the canonical tag, with 782 questions. cmd is more Windows-oriented, but is still command-line. cli is about half-and-half, with half on Windows and half on Linux. terminal is about half OS X and half Linux, and terminal.app is mostly (95%) OS X. I propose that:

cmd, cli, terminal, and terminal.app are retagged into command-line.

Alternatively, reading a couple of the answers here, we could:

retag cmd/terminal.app-specific questions to temporary tags, mass retag all the others into command-line, then mass retag cmd and terminal.app questions back.

Answer 1

I don't believe terminal.app should be retagged as well: Terminal.app refers specifically to Apple's Terminal application part of Mac OS X - a bit of overlap but most questions I've seen tagged terminal.app have to do with settings with the program and less with the command line. If it's to do with the command line and not about the application itself it should be tagged command-line and not terminal.app

Answer 2

I agree with cli->command-line, however I still think there are questions where cmd or terminal/terminal.app are valid and useful tags. Situations where questions deal with the specific terminal/console application should have their own tag.

Answer 3

I think that would be a very good idea. cmd and cli are both command-line interfaces so merging them to command-line shouldn't be a problem.

The difference between Windows and Linux should be made by its accompanying tags...

Answer 4

I generally agree, but what about cases where problem is related to CMD.EXE itself and not any other shells on Windows? Maybe those should have separate tag.

Answer 5

cli can refer to more than just Windows and Linux command line interfaces though. A lot of networking gear is all cli (Cisco IOS, ExtremeOS, JunOS, etc). I know that most of that will pop up on SF rather than SU, though it doesn't hurt to be prepared.

I think cmd is appropriate for Windows, terminal is appropriate for Linux and cli is still applicable in both cases, as well as others.

Answer 6

Whoa, seems like at the time of writing, cmd.exe and cmd are synonyms to command-line.

I can't disagree more with this. The terms "command-line" and "command-line interface" are fairly generic terms meaning, well, the command line. Here's the corresponding Wikipedia page.

On the other hand, "cmd" and "cmd.exe" have a specific meaning – both refer to Window's command-line interpreter (Wikipedia page). It is a command-line shell. You can think of it as Window's equivalent of bash (or whichever shell you prefer).

Making cmd.exe and cmd synonymous to command-line doesn't make sense. It's like making bash and powershell synonymous to command-line (since bash, powershell, cmd.exe are all command-line shells, you see)

Answer 7

I disagree with most of your proposal.

• command-line is not very informative. In fact, it feels like a meta-tag:

  • It doesn't really work as the sole tag: sometimes it's used to mean “I have a problem with the command line”, in which case a shell- or terminal-specific tag should be used instead; sometimes it's used to mean “I want command-line solutions”.
  • It means different things to different people (usually sh and derivatives in a unix context and cmd in a Windows context).

  If it is a meta-tag, it should perhaps be removed.

• cmd is perfectly fine for questions having to do with the default command interpreter of the Windows NT series of operating systems. Maybe a few of its uses have to do with the Windows console instead, and windows-console feels appropriate for that (I guess console is currently used, but it's too broad).

• terminal should be used for questions that have to do with the terminal (e.g. display issues), though often terminal-emulator-specific tags should be used instead.

• terminal.app is specific to the default terminal emulator on Mac OS. There's no reason to make it synonymous to anything else, any more than gnome-terminal, konsole, mintty, etc.

• cli must not be blindly changed to a command-line tag or made a synonym, because it can also refer to the Common Language Infrastructure (think .NET/Mono).

It's to be expected that many questions will be asked with the wrong tag, particularly because people might not understand the distinction between the shell and the terminal. I think there are enough users with retag powers to handle these questions.

People, if you have ≥500 rep and see a mistagged question, go ahead and retag it!