Repository navigation
analyze: print next-step guidance when the database is written #116
Description
When analyze finishes it prints the processed-file counts and the total time, but nothing about what to do next:
Finalizing database. Successfully processed files: 2, Failed files: 0, Files without TypeTrees: 0, Ignored files: 0
Total time: 0.256 s
In a usability experiment, an AI agent given only the binary discovered the built-in views (object_view, view_breakdown_by_type, ...) by running .tables in sqlite3 and called it "a lucky/pleasant discovery, not something --help mentioned". For someone using the downloaded binary, stdout plus the one URL in --help is the entire discovery surface.
Proposal: after finalizing, print a short next-step hint, something like:
Database written to database.db. Start with the object_view and view_breakdown_by_type views.
Schema reference: https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/UnityDataTools/blob/main/Documentation/analyzer.md
The URL should be version-pinned once the --help documentation link is (tracked separately).
Activity
SkowronskiAndrew commentedon Sep 15, 2026
We have made some related usability improvements already, e.g. version help url #119, local copy of documentation #118, and will have better schema documentation #120. So priority of this is a bit lower, but i'm not going to close it until a bit more consideration.
Printing the database path does seem like a good idea.
I'm less certain about how to point to the schema and whether its worth saying
Start with the object_view and view_breakdown_by_type views.That might become irritating when running analyze frequently manually. The--helptext for analyze feels like a better place to give hints about how to get started with the resulting database and that should also be discoverable easily by an agent.