rcli

WHAT IS THIS

rcli is a simple tool for writing and managing command-line applications. It spawned simply from me not liking the idea that I have to type ‘thor’ before my command line scripts. This is my take on getting this done a little more cleanly.

CAVEAT

This was done a project to learn ruby, and is by no means perfect. If you like it, please let me know. If you would like to add features, also let me know as I’ll be glad to hear your ideas and integrate your code.

Most importantly, if you have ideas of things I did wrong and could do better, let me know! The point is for me to learn, hopefully you find use in this at the same time.

INSTALLATION

Find a nice place to put this repo. I like:

mkdir -p ~/lib/ruby cd ~/lib/ruby git clone git://github.com/edelbalso/rcli.git

Now build the gem

cd rcli build rcli.gemspec gem install rcli-0.6.gem Then install the required gems:

gem install highline gem install text and you should be good to go. Try:

rcli

If you don’t get a page full of exceptions, you’re good to go. If so, get in touch with me and I will help you out.

ADVANCED INSTALLATION

*WARNING! WARNING!*

I suggest you back up your ~/.bash_profile before completing this step. You’ve been warned.

*END WARNING!*

rcli has the capability of ‘installing’ the applications you make with it so that they’re available system-wide. It does this by creating a ‘.rcli’ hidden folder and storing the locations of your applications once they’re installed.

To set up this folder in your home directory, type:

rcli install

It will then prompt you to add a line to your .bash_profile. If you’ve succesfully backed up your .bash_profile, go ahead and accept this. The uninstall doesn’t yet remove the added lines, so if you’ve done this once, no point in doing it again or it will just mess up your file unecessarily.

Once installed, do this to load the path into your terminal:

source ~/.bash_profile

WRITING YOUR FIRST APP

To get started with rcli, simply create a folder anywhere in your home folder where you’d like to keep your applications. I like:

mkdir -p ~/lib/ruby/rcli_apps/

but any folder will do. Now create your app:

cd ~/lib/ruby/rcli_apps/ rcli generate gemate rcli install gemate/gemate.rb gemate

You should now have created an application ‘gemate’ that can be used from anywhere on your system. Go ahead and confirm this:

rcli list

‘gemate’ should be listed here. If you have textmate installed, you can now go ahead and edit the generate app by typing:

rcli edit gemate

and you can go ahead and rename the command located at ‘lib/commands/example.rb’ to ‘lib/commands/view.rb’

mv gemate/lib/commands/example.rb gemate/lib/commands/view.rb

and put the following code in the file:

class ViewCommand < Command

def after_init # called after Command::initialize @description = “Opens a gem (or gems) to be viewed in Textmate” end

def main

if @params.size != 1 puts “ERROR: please provide a gem name to look up” end

name = @params[0] term = name + ‘*’

puts “Searching for ‘” + term + “’…”

# get the path to the gem directory from rubygems and search for any matching directories path = ‘gem env gemdir` new_path = File.join([path.chomp, ’gems’]) Dir.chdir(new_path) @d_arr = Dir.glob(term)

if @d_arr.empty? puts “Sorry, nothing like that found” elsif @d_arr.size == 1 view_one() else view_list() end

end

private

def view_one puts @d_arr.first print ‘Do you want to view this? [Y/n]: ’ resp = $stdin.gets.chomp! if resp.empty? or resp.downcase == ‘y’ exec “mate #@d_arr@d_arr.first” end end

def view_list @d_arr.each_with_index {|d,i| puts “#{i + 1}: #d”} puts print ‘Choose a directory or quit(q): ’ idx = gets.chomp! if idx.downcase == ‘q’ exit elsif (1..@d_arr.size).include?(idx.to_i) exec “mate #- 1)” else puts ‘not a valid option’ end end

end

This code has been ripped off from one of the Thor tutorials. My apologies.

Anyways, after saving this file, you should now be able to type

gemate view thor

and textmate should pop up with the thor. You should similarly be able to view any other gem installed on your system.

Congrats, you’ve made your first command-line app with rcli.

TO DO

Trollop is being used to parse commands. I need to clean up command-level

customization of trollop

Wrap shell commands provided by highline into something clean.

DEPENDENCIES

sudo gem install highline sudo gem install text

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Yehuda Katz for code I copied from Thor::Actions modules, as well as a bunch of other chunks. :)

rcli

WHAT IS THIS

CAVEAT

INSTALLATION

ADVANCED INSTALLATION

WRITING YOUR FIRST APP

TO DO

DEPENDENCIES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Copyright