Consider enabling a config file for each wallet

[thunderbiscuit]

The bdk-cli tool currently requires users provide arguments to all commands (or set environment variables active for each call).

I was using it this week to set up a signet test wallet, and the result of it is that I had to build and save a file of pre-built commands ready to go because the commands are long and not easy to remember/type.

For example, here is how I start the repl on my signet wallet with a Kyoto client (different descriptor than here):

bdk-cli --datadir ~/temp/ --network signet repl --wallet "test1" --client-type cbf --cbf-skip-blocks 100000 --database-type sqlite --ext-descriptor "tr(tprv8ZgxMBicQKsPf2qfrEygW6fdYseJDDrVnDv26PH5BHdvSuG6ecCbHqLVof9yZcMoM31z9ur3tTYbSnr1WBqbGX97CbXcmp5H6qeMpyvx35B/86h/1h/0h/0/*)"

Using a config file

The cli could potentially build a fully-fledged toml config file for each wallet it creates. When the user calls the cli using the --wallet <name> option, most arguments could then be filled out for them, keeping the call site simple and clean. This config file can live in the directory associated with the wallet (example: ~/.bdk-cli/test1/config.toml). Config file example:

name = "test1"
network = "signet"
client-type = "cbf"
cbf-skip-blocks = 100000
database-type = "sqlite"

This would make the call site much simpler:

bdk-cli --datadir ~/temp/ repl --wallet "test1" --ext-descriptor "tr(tprv8ZgxMBicQKsPf2qfrEygW6fdYseJDDrVnDv26PH5BHdvSuG6ecCbHqLVof9yZcMoM31z9ur3tTYbSnr1WBqbGX97CbXcmp5H6qeMpyvx35B/86h/1h/0h/0/*)"

There are potentially some other things you could do with this (saving the public descriptors?) enabling balance and sync without even providing the descriptors again. Not sure of tradeoffs there. I know the wallet is meant as test and whatnot, so in general I'm not worried about privacy and having the config file in plain text, but maybe that's worth thinking about a bit more.

[tvpeter]

Thank you @thunderbiscuit for this issue.

We already have a related issue here: #192.

You can review the PR for it here #203.

Thank you

[thunderbiscuit]

Oh shoot sorry man! I should have looked more carefully. I initially took a look at the issue titles but didn't realize #192 was referring to the same idea. Thanks a bunch for working on it!

I'll close this issue now.