oc create doesn't honour -o json in same way that oc new-app does.

[GrahamDumpleton]

When you run oc new-app and use the -o json option it will run checks to see if the application creation might work, but doesn't actually do it, instead outputting what would be created in the format requested by the -o option, JSON in this case.

If you use oc create, qualifying it with the type of resource you want to create, such as a route and use -o json, then it goes off and creates the resource anyway and doesn't output anything.

I would expect, and I believe it would be much more useful, if -o json worked the same was as oc new-app when when using oc create to create specific resources. Thus for example, running:

oc create route edge myapp-ssl --service myapp --hostname example.com -o json 

should do nothing except output the JSON definition of what would be created.

This would be useful for validating what gets created is what you intend to be created before you do it, but also that it provides a good way of creating definitions for specific scenarios, which you could then cut and paste what would be created, into a template.

I use route here as an example but expect that this could be applied to all resources oc create can explicitly create.

I can't see that this would conflict with existing usage of -o option and in fact -o on oc new-app already seems to be overloaded in that can be name for succinct output of what would be created, and json or yaml to give definition of what would be created but don't do anything.

[fabianofranz]

So, this is an important issue because we are very inconsistent today.

The way upstream commands (like run, create, and others) work (and how everything should work in my opinion) is

• --output flag only specifies how the output of the running command will look like, but it doesn't affect in executing the action on not.
• --dry-run is what must be used to not really execute the action and it can be used with --output, a very common use case is --dry-run --output=json to check what would be created, copy and paste into template, etc.

Problem is, we have a number of commands where --output=<mode> does not execute but behaves like --dry-run --output=<mode>. To name a few, new-app, new-build, rollback, set env, set volumes (but not set image, set deployment-hook), and others.

But there's backwards compatibility.

@juanvallejo can you link the --dry-run work you are doing?
@bparees @csrwng @smarterclayton

[juanvallejo]

@fabianofranz

@juanvallejo can you link the --dry-run work you are doing?

Sure:

• Upstream: adding --dry-run option to kubectl apply (soon to be expanded to kubectl create sub-commands as well)
• Downstream: adding --dry-run to remaining oc create sub-commands

[smarterclayton]

We will not break back compact on create or new-app for a long time, so let's find work arounds.

[GrahamDumpleton]

The only way to avoid backward compatibility issues would be to keep that if -o json or -o yaml is used that it implies --dry-run. The --dry-run option wouldn't be redundant as still may want that just to check things if not explicitly asking for json/yaml of resources created to be output.

[juanvallejo]

Also related PR (adds oc create support for output formats other than name): #12015

[openshift-bot]

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/lifecycle stale

[openshift-bot]

Stale issues rot after 30d of inactivity.

Mark the issue as fresh by commenting /remove-lifecycle rotten.
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/lifecycle rotten
/remove-lifecycle stale

[GrahamDumpleton]

/lifecycle frozen

[soltysh]

This should be fixed by now
/remove-lifecycle frozen
/close

[openshift-ci-robot]

@soltysh: Closing this issue.

In response to this:

This should be fixed by now
/remove-lifecycle frozen
/close

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