[RFC] change(gnokey): use filename as arg in sign cmd

[harry-hov]

Description

Currently gnokey sign takes keyname/address as arg and filename from flag --txPath. This PR reverses that order.
Now it takes filename as arg and keyname/address from flag --key.

Because:

• it makes more sense to me this way

• it would be easier to accommodate multiple filenames in future (if we want to support that).

  Something like:

  gnokey sign multiple-unsigned.tx unsigned1.tx unsigned2.tx ... --key=foo > combined-signed.tx

  (see Support generating multi msg transaction with gnokey #845)

I would like to have your opinion on this. Please consider this PR as a place to discuss about this.

---

Contributors Checklist

• Added new tests, or not needed, or not feasible
• Provided an example (e.g. screenshot) to aid review or the PR is self-explanatory
• Updated the official documentation or not needed
• No breaking changes were made, or a BREAKING CHANGE: xxx message was included in the description
• Added references to related issues and PRs
• Provided any useful hints for running manual tests

Maintainers Checklist

• Checked that the author followed the guidelines in CONTRIBUTING.md
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[zivkovicmilos]

I'm against introducing such a change into the gnokey codebase, for a few reasons:

• it invalidates practically all tutorials / guides / video workshops we have created, since a critical API is changed
• if we wanted to support multiple files for the input of gnokey sign, it's trivial to do it with the ff we're using, no need to have these as command arguments
• you sign multiple things with a single key, and not any other way (multiple keys for multiple things) in a single command run. This is why the key is the argument (single, required)

I would 💯 support an effort to have the key be a flag (or frankly, everything be a flag), instead of having arguments which caused headaches in the past, but this is not the topic of the PR

cc @moul

[thehowl]

Key is obviously required, so I don't think it makes sense to have it as a flag. I don't think we'll need multiple keys, so maybe something we could do is to extend the command, maybe making the -txpath flag hidden if it's possible (for compatibility with old tutorials) and make the new syntax gnokey sign [flags] <key-name-or-address> [<file>...].

[harry-hov]

I very much like the sign API of cosmos-based chains

(binary)d tx sign <file> --from $ADDRESS

So I wanted to discuss the possibility of making it uniform with cosmos or better.

I think it's a good time to discuss BREAKING API changes if it improves gnokey.
(Since I believe we are still early stage, It'll be tough after mass adoption or mainnet)
(Documentation should keep evolving with code changes if it's for better future)

Cosmos also has a very nice implementation of multisign(multiple keys for single tx). Maybe we want to take a look.

Opened this PR to initiate a discussion on this. that's why It's marked as RFC.

Thanks.

(Maybe I'm just used to cosmos sign API :p)

[thehowl]

I think it's a good time to discuss BREAKING API changes if it improves gnokey. (Since I believe we are still early stage, It'll be tough after mass adoption or mainnet) (Documentation should keep evolving with code changes if it's for better future)

Cosmos also has a very nice implementation of multisign(multiple keys for single tx). Maybe we want to take a look.

Opened this PR to initiate a discussion on this. that's why It's marked as RFC.

Agreed & understood, just wanted to throw in my 2c.

I don't know enough about multisign; but don't think we necessarily need to do the same as cosmos sdk without good reason.

[harry-hov]

I don't know enough about multisign; but don't think we necessarily need to do the same as cosmos sdk without good reason.

I agree with you 💯

But we can always learn from other implementations out there. And implement something which is better and fits our usecase.

[thehowl]

So, we discussed this during the review meeting (and together with this, also came to a decision on short flags, #1555).

We can go through with this change, so we make consistent throughout gnokey that the way to pass the key you want to use is through the -key parameter.

Please, @harry-hov, update this PR with master and ensure that this is consistently applied to all gnokey commands :)

Thanks!