From: Intransition <transfire@...>
Date: 2010-06-14T04:43:01+09:00
Subject: Re: State of the union for Ruby CLI libraries?



On Jun 13, 12:07 pm, John Feminella <jo...@distb.net> wrote:
> I am starting construction on a somewhat complicated internal
> application whose primary interface will be the command line. In the
> past, for similar projects, I've just used OptionParser, but I think I
> need something a little beefier. Specifically, I think I need these
> features:
>
> * colorized output
> * sensible option parsing
> * sensible enumeration of options for help output
> * support for `git`-like subcommands, e.g., `app create`, `app
> delete`, etc., that can be intuitively and cleanly mapped to methods
> * ability to be insensitive to option ordering, e.g. `app create --foo
> quux --bar` should be semantically identical to `app create --bar
> --foo quux`
>
> Does that sort of thing exist? I've noticed there are some apparently
> more powerful alternatives like Thor, which is more of a full-stack
> scripting framework, and I'm wondering what else might be useful to
> take a look at.
>
> Any and all suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks!

OptionParser generally works fine --even for the items you mention. To
handle subcommands just pop off the top of ARGV before parsing (or for
more advanced use, find the first non-option item). The order of
options is not an issue, and help is pretty easy since OptionPaser
responds to #to_s. Running that through a colorizing filter shouldn't
be too hard. For color try http://rubyworks.github.com/ansi.

There are other options out there though, check out HighLine and
Oyster for instance.