Docopt alternatives

[Fraser Scott]

Hi all,

As part of the refactoring I've kinda gone in a 3 tier CLI direction. The general format is still

pki.io <command> <action> [args]

but I was finding that for different actions overlapping args were clashing. A missing arg for one action should have a default value, but for another action it should be empty (e.g for updates). So, I was trying to do something like:

pki.io help

General help listing all commands

pki.io help command

Command help listing all the actions

pki.io command help action

Action help listing all options

So under this scheme, each action would have it's own docopt usage and therefor individual options, whereas before there was simply one for root and each command (showing all of the actions for that command).

I spent a good few hours on it, but just couldn't get docopt to behave correctly with processing help and showing decent information.... i sort of dislike the minimal usage it sometimes displays.

I had a look around and found https://github.com/spf13/cobra which has exactly the behaviour I was hoping for. It isn't as elegant as docopt, coding the CLI is quite verbose, but it works pretty much perfectly out of the box.

The only downside is that it seems to have quite a few dependencies.

Any thoughts?

Cheers

[Fraser Scott]

The other thing about cobra is that it seems to rely on global variables quite a bit... which feels a bit wrong. Maybe I'm missing something.

[Jon Bonazza]

Global variables are 100% okay and even conventional in go code. It's been one of the hardest things for me to get used to in go. Haha

On Wed, Sep 2, 2015, 3:50 AM Fraser Scott <fraser...@gmail.com> wrote:

The other thing about cobra is that it seems to rely on global variables quite a bit... which feels a bit wrong. Maybe I'm missing something.

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[Fraser Scott]

On Wednesday, 2 September 2015 15:06:53 UTC+1, Jon Bonazza wrote:

Global variables are 100% okay and even conventional in go code. It's been one of the hardest things for me to get used to in go. Haha

Huh. Eww, but huh ;)

Anyway, I *think* I managed to get it working with docopt which is nice because I find it a much more elegant approach and it doesn't  have a ton of dependencies. So far I've only got it right in a little prototype app, but hopefully it will fit into the real app ok.

[Athanasios Kostopoulos]

Hi all,

can't we beat docopt into submission (and maybe submit some PRs upstream)? What do you guys think?

Best!

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[Fraser Scott]

On 3 September 2015 at 07:16, Athanasios Kostopoulos <athanasios...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all,

can't we beat docopt into submission (and maybe submit some PRs upstream)? What do you guys think?

Best!

Yeah, trying. Not sure how easy it would be to get a PR merged unless it was a Go specific bug. Hopefully it won't come to that. 

[Fraser Scott]

That's it.. I'm ditching the whole "pki.io help <command>" thing. If you want help, either type something wrong or add -h or --help :D

Stupid modern CLIs... get off my lawn!

[Fraser Scott]

And the winner is....

https://github.com/jawher/mow.cli

Top level...

$ ./pki.io

Usage: pki.io [OPTIONS] COMMAND [arg...]

Scalable, open source X.509 certificate management

Options:

  -l, --log-level="info"   log level

  --logging=""             alternative logging configuration

Commands:

  init          Initialize an organization

  admin         Manage organization admins

  ca            Manage X.509 Certificate Authorities

  cert          Manage X.509 certificates

  csr           Manage X.509 Certificate Signing Requests

  node          Manage node entities

  org           Manage the organization

  pairing-key   Manage pairing keys

Run 'pki.io COMMAND --help' for more information on a command.

Command ...

$ ./pki.io ca

Usage: pki.io ca COMMAND [arg...]

Manage X.509 Certificate Authorities

Commands:

  new          Create a new CA

  import       Import CA from existing keys

  list         List CAs

  show         Show a CA

  update       Update an existing CA

  delete       Delete a CA

Run 'pki.io ca COMMAND --help' for more information on a command.

Action...

$ ./pki.io ca new

Error: incorrect usage

Usage: pki.io ca new NAME [OPTIONS]

Create a new CA

Arguments:

  NAME=""      name of CA

Options:

  --tags="NAME"      comma separated list of tags

  --ca-expiry=365    CA expiry period in days

  --cert-expiry=90   Certificate expiry period in days

  --key-type="ec"    Key type (ec or rsa)

  --dn-l=""          Locality for DN scope

  --dn-st=""         State/province for DN scope

  --dn-o=""          Organization for DN scope

  --dn-ou=""         Organizational unit for DN scope

  --dn-c=""          Country for DN scope

  --dn-street=""     Street for DN scope

  --dn-postal=""     PostalCode for DN scope