The change from -c | --config to -s | --settings appears to have been made very abruptly. While the release notes mention this change via alr config --> alr settings, they don't address the CLI switches. Moreover, the error reporting doesn't clearly indicated to the user what needs to be changed. Consider the output from one of my scripts that uses Alire:

DEBUG    (cd infrastructure/software/alr && bin/alr -c /home/tony/OpenUxAS/infrastructure/software/alr/config toolchain --select gnat_native^13 gprbuild^22)
ERROR: --config is deprecated, use --settings instead
CRITICAL Install GNAT toolchain using alr failed.
CRITICAL Install GNAT FSF failed.

I was using the short form of the switch, yet the error message referred to the long form. And there was no deprecation warning issued here, simply an error that stopped my script from continuing.

Note also that in the testsuite/drivers/alr.py file, there are commands that make it look as though -c should work:

run_alr("-c", settings_dir, "settings", "--global",
                "--set", "msys2.do_not_install", "true")

The solution is to change -c --> -s.

It'd be helpful if there were a migration guide around this breaking change and better support from Alire in its error reporting, so that users know what to change.