Self-documenting programs

[m4dc4p]

Obtaining the spec for an application should be as easy as possible. OpenCLI apps should provide their own spec when given a standard argument (—spec, —help-opencli, or similar).

[patriksvensson]

It would be great if the OpenCLI Specification (not the description document) specified a convention for dumping an OpenCLI Description.

An example could be:

$ ./myapp --open-cli
$ ./myapp --open-cli "myapp.json"

And maybe even on sub commands to get partial schemas?

$ ./myapp subcommand --open-cli

[m4dc4p]

Absolutely!

[patriksvensson]

I'm thinking it might be a good idea as well to add some kind of mechanism to query an executable if it supports OpenCLI.

$ ./myapp --open-cli-query

Perhaps it could return a specific exit code indicating that it is supported?

[m4dc4p]

I'm thinking it might be a good idea as well to add some kind of mechanism to query an executable if it supports OpenCLI.

$ ./myapp --open-cli-query

Perhaps it could return a specific exit code indicating that it is supported?

Doesn’t seem super useful. When the binary does not support openCLI, this will likely give an error about unrecognized arguments. Which is the same behavior —open-cli would give when not supported.

[heaths]

FWIW, seems most CLI arg parsing frameworks e.g., Go's spf13/cobra or Rust's clap already use a completion command with an optional -s|--shell arg that otherwise tries to guess at the shell based on the parent process, I assume. So maybe something like my-cli completion -s opencli?

[patriksvensson]

So, should we go with the completion -s opencli suggestion that @heaths suggested then, and automatically be compliant with at least two CLI frameworks? Or does anyone have other suggestions?

[FrediKats]

Hi, @patriksvensson.
I was looking for a command to generate an OpenCLI spec from my Spectre.Console.Cli application and came across this discussion.
I don’t have much experience with CLI design, but as a user, I would appreciate having any API that can generate a spec from existing Spectre.Console.Cli.

P.S. If there’s a related issue for this request, please share the link with me.

[patriksvensson]

This discussion has been moved over to #46