The default configuration file ( https://github.com/EUDAT-B2STAGE/B2STAGE-DataStaging-script/blob/master/datastager.cfg ) includes
action = None
direction = None
which overrides sub-commands given as arguments to the script. The effects of this are not clearly documented, e.g. in http://eudat.eu/User%20Documentation%20-%20Data%20Staging%20Script.html . In addition, the previous documentation page includes a number of inconsistencies. For example, datastagerconfig.py.example does not exist in the repository and 'path' sub-command is replaced by 'issue'.
To enable sub-commands, one needs to comment out the defaults in the default configuration file.