/libUbercommand.sh

a bash tool similar to https://github.com/slackhq/magic-cli

Primary LanguageShellApache License 2.0Apache-2.0

libUbercommand.sh

⚠️ This project is now retired. I recommend you use the amazing just tool instead.

For more details about project retirement, please see RETIREMENT.md.

⚠️ On 2023/11/08, I cleaned up some incorrect contact information (user.name and user.email) in the commit history via git-filter-repo.

If you have a clone that predates this change, you will need to run git pull --rebase to get the new history and allow git to work properly. Clones made after this date don't need to do anything.

A bash tool similar to Slack's magic-cli : A foundation for building your own suite of command line tools.

libUbercommand.sh exists to make it easy to create a set of tools that work together. It's not a tool you use as-is; it's here to offer a starting point for your own custom command line tools.

The idea is to unify related tools under a single "ubercommand" in much the same way as git, making related tools easily discoverable.

Building your ubercommand is trivial:

  1. Copy libUbercommand.sh to a well-known location on your system (e.g. /usr/local/lib)
  2. Create your ubercommand script wherever you want it to be. In the script, set the environment variable UBERCOMMAND_DESC to a description of your command, and then source the library file (e.g. . /usr/local/lib/libUbercommand.sh)
  3. Create "subcommands" using the scripting language of your choice in the same directory as your ubercommand named using the pattern "UBERCOMMAND-SUBCOMMAND" (for example, if your ubercommand is mycmd and you have a subcommand dostuff, then that subcommand should be named mycmd-dostuff
  4. Add summary text to your subcommand. This is done by adding a line anywhere in your subcommand script that contains the text # Summary: followed by summary text. If your subcommand is a binary, you should implement a wrapper script to invoke it so that it can provide summary text.
  5. Implement a --help option in your subcommand that provides more detailed help than just usage information.

That's it. Now you can:

  • get a list of your subcommands by just typing the name of your ubercommand (e.g. mycmd)
  • get help for any of your subcommands via help (e.g. mycmd help dostuff)
  • invoke your subcommands (e.g. mycmd dostuff arg1 arg2 ...)