dotnet / dotnet/sdk

Watch.Aspire tool does not provide meaningful help

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#53,697 2 comments 1 reaction 2 assignees Claimed by @tmat View on GitHub
Area-Watch
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C#
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Description

## Repro steps

1. Install `Watch.Aspire` tool:

`dotnet tool install --global Microsoft.DotNet.HotReload.Watch.Aspire --version 10.0.201`

(as per https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.DotNet.HotReload.Watch.Aspire/10.0.201).
2. `Microsoft.DotNet.HotReload.Watch.Aspire --help`

## Expected
The tool outputs short description of its purpose and information about invocation arguments and parameters it can take (and what they do).

## Actual
```shell
Unhandled exception. System.InvalidOperationException: Option '--sdk' is required.
   at System.CommandLine.Binding.ArgumentConverter.GetValueOrDefault[T](ArgumentConversionResult result)
   at System.CommandLine.Parsing.OptionResult.GetValueOrDefault[T]()
   at System.CommandLine.Parsing.SymbolResult.GetRequiredValue[T](Option`1 option)
   at System.CommandLine.ParseResult.GetRequiredValue[T](Option`1 option)
   at Microsoft.DotNet.Watch.DotNetWatchOptions.TryParse(String[] args, DotNetWatchOptions& options) in /_/src/sdk/src/BuiltInTools/Watch.Aspire/DotNetWatchOptions.cs:line 70
   at Program.$(String[] args) in /_/src/sdk/src/BuiltInTools/Watch.Aspire/Program.cs:line 4
   at Program.(String[] args)
```

@tmat argued that the tool is not really meant for direct human use so the help response is low priority, but the `--help` invocation is the very first thing that an AI tool tried with `Watch.Aspire` when I was building an app that was using it, and then AI spent a lot of tokens trying to figure out how to use the tool. So I think we should do better.

CC @DustinCampbell

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