[Feature]: Unify Az PowerShell command / args structure with Azure CLI

[byteknacker]

Description of the new feature

Dear Microsoft Team,

I appreciate your effort in bringing the full range of Azure administration capabilities to both PowerShell and Azure CLI. What I noticed is that most of the time, the command names, structure and argument names do not match between these two command line languages.

I would propose that you refactor the PowerShell command line for Azure in such a way that there is a very easy one-to-one mapping between the commands and args of PowerShell and CLI.

Example of current status quo:

PowerShell:

Register-AzResourceProvider -ProviderNamespace Microsoft.Insights

Azure CLI:

az provider register --namespace Microsoft.Insights

Notice here that you cannot guess one from the other. There is no easy mapping between Register-AzResourceProvider and az provider register. The word ordering is reversed. The -ProviderNamespace is not the same as --namespace.

Proposed implementation details (optional)

Proposed solution:

PowerShell:

AzProviderRegister -Namespace Microsoft.Insights

Azure CLI:

az provider register --namespace Microsoft.Insights

In this example, AzProviderRegister can be directly mapped to az provider register using a simple function: (lower case everything, separate every word by a space character). The flag -Namespace maps directly to --namespace.

This way you can simplify massively the adoption of PowerShell commands since every Linux-based programmer can now, almost without thinking or checking the documentation, guess the correct PowerShell commands.

What do you think about that?

Best wishes,
John

[isra-fel]

Hi @byteknacker thanks again for the feedback. The inconsistency of Azure PowerShell and CLI lies deeper as they are designed with fundamentally different design guidelines.
You see Azure PowerShell is a set of PowerShell modules. We must comply with the design guidelines of PowerShell. For example, all cmdlets must be named in the form of "Verb-None", whereas Azure CLI designs their commands based on command groups, i.e. the space-divided syntax.
Though I won't deny the possibility of better consistency - with the help of AI technology we might be able to develop a tool to easily transform between PS/CLI scripts.
cc @Alex-wdy
BTW, let me convert the conversation to a GitHub discussion as it's a more apporpriate place.