To new line or not to new line?

Web and design CLI Guidelines
#1

On a new line:

Messages that are important to the user, that would be helpful in explaining what is happening and why it is happening. For example, $ juju deploy charmed-kubernetes displays each action that is happening and its status, as it is likely to take a while and the user should be informed of where the process is.

Not on a new line (overwriting the last line):

Messages that would disappear quickly and the user is likely to not mind not having a record of each action that has happened. For example, $ snap remove vlc overwrites each progress message as it is executed and upon success displays just the success message.

Progress indication
About the CLI Guidelines category
#2

Some other reasons to prefer appending:

  • If the command often fails in a way that can be debugged by examining the output.
  • If the output often contains hints about future usage, like “(To skip this next time, use: xyz --ignore-marmosets)”

Some other reasons to prefer replacing:

  • If a command is often used repeatedly — because then previous invocations are more likely to be visible in the terminal without scrolling, for people to refer/compare to.
  • If the main purpose of the command is simply to display output in the terminal — in which case it’s better for progress feedback not to remain behind to distract from it.
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