Right now PICA supports five different internal commands, but more could be added in the near future since we are still adding new features.
With each of these commands we can use the -v option for verbosity, and -n for debug (as with make, it does nothing, simply print information and "simulate" it's working). Option -n gives a lot of output and doesn't really do anything, just prints what it would do.
All these commands are executed using SSH connections to the remote hosts. Right now PICA doesn't have any access control system, and will probably never have one. We like SSH and it gives us everything we need to access remote servers securely, so we used it for PICA. You know, as they say: KISS4.
Just one suggestion, if you are willing to use PICA, you better configure properly the RSA authentication, or be ready to type a lot of passwords... One nice trick is to distribute the SSH's RSA authentication files using PICA as explained in one of the real life examples described later.