How should command line related questions be tagged?

Question

This question/problem has come up multiple times in the past:

• Is command-line a meta tag?
• Retag cmd, cli, terminal, and terminal.app into command-line
• SU Retag Request: [cmd] --> [command-line]

I propose that command-line is a horrible tag, because it really only makes sense when it is combined with (at least) an operating system tag and tags that only make sense when combined with other tags are not good tags.

During recent tag cleanups, I've come across a few different tags that are all used for similar topics: shell, command-line, console and terminal are the generic (bad) ones and then there are the specific (good) tags like bash, zsh and cmd.exe.

terminal is used ambiguously, but usually relating to a CLI, even though the tag excerpt also mentions the more classical type of terminal. Even when the tag is used in relation to a CLI, it's bad. Either the tag for the specific CLI (like bash) should be used, or none at all.

shell is used for both CLI and generally everything that is somehow a user interface, which, I guess, is technically correct, but not useful.

I faintly remember that we once settled for tagging Windows Command Prompt related questions with windowscommand-line. As I mentioned above, this is bad. There are many CLIs for Windows (conemu, console2, cmd.exe, powershell, ...). These tags should be used, or none at all.

Answer 1

Your last point is wrong. ConEmu and Console2 are not shells (to use the *nix term), they're terminal emulators, much like the default conhost.

cmd.exe is more equivalent to *nix shells like bash and zsh, though I don't think it's that great of a tag - perhaps "Windows Command Processor", which is in the description field of cmd.exe. Or "Windows Command Prompt", since "Command Prompt" seems to be the name Microsoft uses, and the default name in the start menu. ('course, the MS docs still mention MS-DOS as of the Windows 8.1 revision, so I'd be wary about trusting it too much.)

I'd say windows-command-prompt is probably the most recognisable and correct, as far as official documentation goes.

Answer 2

Okay, here's the master plan:

1. cmd.exe will be merged and synonymized → windows-command-prompt.

2. We will start a tag-cleanup-request for terminal, to have it retagged to terminal.app where appropriate. When complete, terminal will be synonymized with terminal.app.

3. shell and console will be merged and synonymized → command-line and a tag-cleanup-request will be created for command-line to have the questions retagged with more specific tags.