Gluegun

Gluegun is a delightful toolkit for building Node-based 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.

Why use Gluegun?

You might want to use Gluegun if:

• You need to build a CLI app
• You want to have powerful tools at your fingertips
• And you don't want to give up flexibility at the same time

If so ... 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 be configured 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 CLI - React Native CLI and starter kit
• Solidarity - audits your system dependencies so you can develop in peace
• AWS Amplify CLI - A CLI toolchain for simplifying serverless web and mobile development
• Sara Vieira's Fiddly - Create beautiful and simple HTML pages from your Readme.md files - https://fiddly.netlify.com

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.js 7.6+ is required.

Sponsors

Gluegun is sponsored by Infinite Red, a premium custom mobile app and web design and development agency. We are a team of designers and developers distributed across the USA and based out of Portland, Oregon and the San Francisco Bay Area. Our specialties are UI/UX design, React and React Native, Node, and more. Email hello@infinite.red if you'd like to talk about your project!