gluegun

gluegun is a lightweight toolkit for building command-line interfaces (CLIs), with support for:

🌯 parameters - command line arguments and options
🎛 template - generating files from templates
🗄 patching - manipulating file contents
💾 filesystem - moving files and directories around
⚒ system - executing other command-line scripts
🎅 http - interacting with API servers
🛎 prompt - auto-complete prompts
💃 print - printing pretty colors and tables
👩‍✈️ semver - working with semantic versioning
🎻 strings - manipulating strings & template data

In addition, gluegun supports expanding your CLI's ecosystem with a robust set of easy-to-write plugins and extensions.

Yeah, But Why?

If you want to have your CLI...

get built quickly
have plugin support
but skip the boring parts of developing it
and avoid large CLI libraries that want to take over your world

... welcome!

Quick Start

Just run the gluegun CLI like this:

$ npm install -g gluegun@next
$ gluegun new movies
$ cd movies
$ npm install
$ npm link
$ movies help

You should see your new CLI help. Open the folder in your favorite editor and start building your CLI!

Tip: If you want your CLI to use TypeScript, pass in --typescript

Code

Let's start with what a gluegun CLI looks like.

// in movie/src/cli.js...

// ready
const { build } = require('gluegun')

// aim
const movieCLI = build('movie')
  .src(`${__dirname}/core-plugins`)
  .plugins('node_modules', { matching: 'movie-*' })
  .help()
  .version()
  .defaultCommand()
  .create()

// fire!
movieCLI.run()

Commands

Commands are simple objects that provide a name, optional aliases, and a function to run.

// in movie/commands/foo.js
module.exports = {
  name: 'foo',
  alias: 'f',
  run: async function(toolbox) {
    // gluegun provides all these features and more!
    const { system, print, filesystem, strings } = toolbox

    // ...and be the CLI you wish to see in the world
    const awesome = strings.trim(system.run('whoami'))
    const moreAwesome = strings.kebabCase(`${awesome} and a keyboard`)
    const contents = `🚨 Warning! ${moreAwesome} coming thru! 🚨`
    const home = process.env['HOME']
    filesystem.write(`${home}/realtalk.json`, { contents })

    print.info(`${print.checkmark} Citius`)
    print.warning(`${print.checkmark} Altius`)
    print.success(`${print.checkmark} Fortius`)
  }
}

See the toolbox api docs for more details on what you can do.

See the runtime docs for more details on building your own CLI and join us in the #gluegun channel of the Infinite Red Community Slack (community.infinite.red) to get friendly help!

Who Is Using This?

Ignite - React Native Starter Kit
Solidarity - audits your system dependencies so you can develop in peace
AppMachine - closed source for now (still building) - tool for helping code generate apps

What's under the hood?

We've assembled an all star cast of libraries to help you build your CLI.

⭐️ ejs for templating
⭐️ semver for version investigations
⭐️ fs-jetpack for the filesystem
⭐️ yargs-parser, enquirer, colors, ora and cli-table3 for the command line
⭐️ axios & apisauce for web & apis
⭐️ cosmiconfig for flexible configuration
⭐️ cross-spawn for running sub-commands
⭐️ execa for running more sub-commands
⭐️ node-which for finding executables
⭐️ pluralize for manipulating strings

Node Node.js 7.6+ is required.