Alias is currently overwrote with no warning

[willemneal]

Currently when reusing an alias it will overwrite the old contract id. Should we add a --force flag to allow this but fail otherwise?

[fnando]

The original implementation had --force, but Leigh suggested to always replace the contract id. Is there any real case where you wouldn't want to persist the latest contract id?

https://github.com/stellar/stellar-cli/pull/1356#discussion_r1626762468

[leighmcculloch]

My feedback was that --force is confusing because it doesn't communicate the scope of what is being forced. An option like --force should be focused on the primary action being performed by a command which in this case is deploying the contract, and not related to an ancillary action being performed like saving an alias. Why: It's natural to see options related to their primary action. For example, if we add --force, this command looks like it forces deployment but is actually invalid:

$ stellar contract deploy --wasm ... --force

Or this command which is valid but I think most folks would assume means deployment is forced and the force is unrelated to the alias:

$ stellar contract deploy --wasm ... --force --alias c1

If we want aliases to not overwrite by default, then I think the path that results in a clearer API is:

1. Disallow overriding and add no options for overwriting
2. Add a rm command for removing the alias

[leighmcculloch]

I expect that someone interacting with a pubnet network is probably keeping a record of their contract addresses concretely somewhere that isn't just in these aliases given that it is a production use case, and that these aliases are more useful during development, in which case overwriting feels fine. We overwrite elsewhere.

We could output a log line, or a stderr output saying the alias is being ovewritten and what the old value was and new value, so if someone accidentally ovewrites they can fix it.

[github-actions[bot]]

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