A note....

The cros command currently exists in "depot_tools", but it just looks for the current ChromeOS checkout based on CWD, and bootstraps the local version of the cros command.

That means that by somehow making a current "blessed" version of chromite available in to the cros in depot_tools, we can move most of those commands there. Then we only have to make sure that depot_tools is current, which many Chrome Infra tools do today, but which our tools do not.

chrome-sdk doesn't require a repo checkout.  if it did, the simple chrome workflow wouldn't work at all.

clean requires a checkout, but the entire point of it is to clean a checkout, so decoupling there doesn't make sense.

deploy requires a checkout, but i'm not sure how it'd be useful without one.  the point of it is to take a locally built board package and deploy it to a DUT.

debug is for debugging CrOS binaries, so not sure making it work w/out a chroot is useful.

i'm not exactly sure what the goal of this bug is overall ?

I think I inverted the priorities in the original description.

1) Keep people using current versions, even if they don't "repo sync".
2) Allow as many tools as possible to work without a repo checkout. Especially:
  cros tryjob
  cros pinchrome
  cros uprevchrome
  cros branchutil (upcoming tool, I hope?)

People using older versions tools and having no good way to force updates is a steady source of pain for me, and having to figure out how to have a ChromeOS checkout and maintain it is a steady source of pain for TPMs, Gardeners, and other people who aren't full time ChromeOS developers.

Understanding what happens when these tools are branched (and if they are using a branched version) is even worse.

So... I'd like to make a bunch of these tools manage their own versions. ;>

i agree all of those should work w/out needing a full CrOS checkout.  our previous focus has only been on expanding tools to work in a Chromium browser checkout (e.g. for simple chrome), but that includes the chromite checkout for us already.

i guess you're saying that we shouldn't require people to have either of those ?  but to support just having a depot_tools checkout ?

i hesitate here because we get into a tricky situation ... if your cwd is a CrOS checkout, but you're still getting the launcher/wrapper from depot_tools, should we use the copy in the checkout ?  or always the bootstrapped version ?  the answer to that question depends very heavily on what tool you're trying to use as some of them, by design, won't work with older/newer branches.

I want to force people to use the "current version" for some tools no matter what, so yes, always use the bootstrap version. People doing development could skip the wrapper.

Maybe a new wrapper script should be added that uses bootstrapped code to reduce the magic involved?

"cros-bootstrapped tryjob" instead of "cros tryjob", except with a better name?