Ask HN: What do you use to make CLIs?

#1

Post by mmwtsn » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 2:20 PM UTC

I am curious what people reach for when writing CLIs these days; specifically what language, libraries (if any), and why?

By CLI, I mean any executable program or script like git that supports commands, sub-commands, and POSIX-style flags.

I mostly work in Go, and have been happy with the standard library[1] or Cobra[2]. I also write a lot of shell scripts.

I thought it would be interesting to see some other approaches.

[1]: https://pkg.go.dev/flag [2]: https://cobra.dev

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to make CLIs?

#2

Post by FujiApple » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 2:24 PM UTC

Rust + Clap: https://github.com/clap-rs/clap

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to make CLIs?

#3

Post by stop50 » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 2:48 PM UTC

For python i like the builtin argparse.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to make CLIs?

#4

Post by asicsp » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 3:05 PM UTC

I use a lot of CLI tools, but haven't written many for myself. Mostly, aliases/functions and some scripts in Bash/Python.

1) Extract details for command options from man/help: https://github.com/learnbyexample/command_help/blob/master/c...

2) cut-like syntax for field manipulations with regexp, negative indexing, etc: https://github.com/learnbyexample/regexp-cut/blob/main/rcut

3) Simple calculator using python syntax: https://learnbyexample.github.io/practice_python_projects/ca...

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to make CLIs?

#5

Post by linkdd » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 3:11 PM UTC

Rust + Clap

Go + Cobra

Python + Click

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to make CLIs?

#6

Post by wizwit999 » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 3:35 PM UTC

Oclif is pretty nice for NodeJS, we use it for https://github.com/matanolabs/matano . https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbletea looks really beautiful, if you use Go.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to make CLIs?

#7

Post by jathu » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 3:55 PM UTC

I made fx at Flexport, which hosted many of our CLI tools. I liked it a lot, so I made one for myself when I left: https://github.com/jathu/fx

fx is a workspace tool manager. It allows you to create consistent, discoverable, language-neutral and developer friendly command line tools.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to make CLIs?

#8

Post by drakonka » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 3:58 PM UTC

I usually turn to Go for all of my CLI needs.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to make CLIs?

#9

Post by IceMetalPunk » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 4:07 PM UTC

I'm a JavaScript dev, so I tend to go for Node with Inquirer + Commander.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to make CLIs?

#10

Post by marek_leisk2 » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 4:14 PM UTC

https://typer.tiangolo.com/