April Fools' Day prank for macOS

[HebaruSan]

Background

On macOS 10.15 and later, the GUI doesn't work anymore (see #2272), so we fall back to ConsoleUI, which is based on DOS user interfaces circa 1990 (see #2177), the high point of PC-vs-Mac rivalry. It amuses me to no end to see Mac users using the style of program most emblematic of their vendor's big enemy (and some of them have even said they like it!).

However, we also have a fully functional ckan prompt command emulating command line user interfaces circa 1980 (see #2273), which almost nobody knows about. It might be fun to have a little Easter egg that shows it off. Or this might not be a good idea 🤷.

Changes

Now if you double click the CKAN.app bundle while your system clock indicates a date of April 1st of any year, your Terminal will run ckan prompt instead of ckan consoleui, dropping you into a simple command line environment with commands for all of CKAN's functionality.

To avoid being overly cruel, ckan prompt now prints an April Fools' Day message on that day (as a clue to why it's different) and recommends the consoleui command (to get Mac users back into their familiar DOS-like environment easily). At worst it should be a minor annoyance for 24 hours per year, and at best some users might discover they like the command line environment.

[peterb12]

Please...no.

[DasSkelett]

If I'm honest, I don't like April fools that break users' workflows. Users will get confused, and most of them won't know what to do. Even with an explanatory message, people likely won't see and/or read it, or don't know what to do. This message probably doesn't help someone who has no idea how to use a terminal or our prompt.

You may want to try the consoleui command.

»How do you "try a command"? How do you try "the consoleui" command specifically? What is "the consoleui command" and what happens if I "try it"? I just want to install mods.«

And just look at the mess in the r/KerbalSpaceProgram Discord today, because Sarbian thinks it's a good idea to additionally show the nyan cats, that are normally the sign of a broken installation (broken/outdated DLLs, wrong install location of ModuleManager, wrong Kopernicus DLL...), on the Japanese Cat Day (February 22nd) and April 1st.
Dozens of users thinking their (Kopernicus) installation somehow broke without doing anything, being confused, asking for help, even thinking they got a virus...

And that's just showing some arbitrary symbol, without changing anything, without needing any user intervention.
Now what happens if we actually do an April fool that "breaks" CKAN, and stops it from working as it did the day before? I'm really not looking forward to it.

I'm not per se against April fools, but they should be done carefully IMHO. Nothing that breaks users' workflows and the way CKAN behaves normally. Maybe a ConsoleUI theme change, though even there I can see "CKAN looks different, what should I do?" support requests.

[HebaruSan]

Yeah, that's fair; I'm happy to be talked out of this. Chalk it up to:

What do you think about keeping just the intro text part, so ckan prompt is a bit more responsive than just printing a prompt?

CKAN/Cmdline/Action/Prompt.cs

Lines 16 to 20 in 98b634e

	// Print an intro if not in headless mode
	if (!(opts?.Headless ?? false))
	{
	Console.WriteLine("Welcome to CKAN!");
	Console.WriteLine("");

CKAN/Cmdline/Action/Prompt.cs

Lines 26 to 28 in 98b634e

	Console.WriteLine("To get help, type help and press enter.");
	Console.WriteLine("");
	}

[DasSkelett]

What do you think about keeping just the intro text part, so ckan prompt is a bit more responsive than just printing a prompt?

I'm in on that!

[HebaruSan]

OK, will start a separate branch/PR that doesn't say "April Fools'" for that...