process compose flags

[henrikschristensen]

What problem are you trying to solve?

I am missing the ability to set certain flags for process compose when calling something like 'devbox services up'.
For instance I would like to be able to set the process sort order. flag is --sort in process compose.

What solution would you like?

be able to configure process compose flags in devbox.json

Alternatives you've considered

No response

[jay-aye-see-kay]

You can do that with --pcflags, but the way it's implemented means you need to pass each "word" separately (might be a bug)

i.e. this works for me on devbox 0.16.0

devbox services up --pcflags "--sort" --pcflags "MEM"

[mikeland73]

Triage: looks easy, p3.

What works today: devbox services up already forwards arbitrary flags through --pcflags, which is a StringArray (internal/boxcli/services.go:41-43). Each array element is appended to process-compose's argv as one argument (internal/services/manager.go:162). That's why --pcflags "--sort MEM" doesn't work, but either of these does:

devbox services up --pcflags=--sort=MEM
devbox services up --pcflags --sort --pcflags MEM

What's missing: there's no devbox.json setting for this. The config schema has no process-compose options.

Suggested fix (small):

1. Add an optional field, for example "shell": {"process_compose_flags": [...]} or a top-level "services": {"flags": [...]}, and prepend it to ExtraFlags in services.go around line 287.
2. Document in the --pcflags help text that each flag or value must be passed as its own --pcflags entry, or use = syntax.

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