[Enhancement / Proposal to gem on the commandline] Change the format output of "gem list" #5442
Description
When you currently do issue this:
gem list
You get output like that:
yaml (default: 0.2.0)
zeitwerk (2.5.4)
zlib (default: 2.1.1)
First, I think it is confusing that some gems are listed via "default:" and others not. Only the version number should be displayed, but this is an aside.
If you use python pip and do "pip list", you get something similar:
Package Version
----------- ---------
asciimatics 1.13.0
future 0.18.2
Jinja2 3.1.1
I would like to propose that "gem list" also uses a similar format. That is get rid of the '()' and instead
use a formatted 2D table output that is properly padded.
I would also propose to make this the default.
However had, in the event that people prefer the current output of "gem list" I propose to actually
not change anything, and instead add an additional commandline variant here such as:
gem list --table # or without --
gem list --format # or without --
This should then be similar to the pip output, perhaps including "Package" and "Version" as header.
Rationale: I believe some users may prefer a padded output that is simpler to parse and read. Right
now if you have lots of gems, it is all a bit messy. I recently had to use python and pip and I found
that this is a tiny bit easier to read and keep track of when using pip.
I am appreciative of anyone having pro/con opinion about this, and as said, I am not actually really
proposing to change the default, but primarily about enabling a similar format style. People
could then alias this such as I do via "geml" being an alias to "gem list". I could change that to
"gem list --format" or whatever other commandline variant is acceptable then.