cobra-cli

Install the Cobra generator using go install. Ensure your $GOPATH/bin is in your $PATH to use the cobra-cli command directly.

go install github.com/spf13/cobra-cli@latest

Use cobra-cli add <command> to add new commands to your existing application.

Important Rules:

• Naming: Use camelCase for command names (e.g., addUser, not add-user). The generator appends Cmd to the name for the internal variable.
• Parenting: Use the -p flag to assign a command to a specific parent command. If omitted, the command defaults to rootCmd.
• Flags: cobra-cli add supports the same optional flags as init (--author, --license, --viper).

Example of creating a nested command structure (app config create):

cobra-cli add serve
cobra-cli add config
cobra-cli add create -p 'configCmd'

The cobra-cli init command creates the initial application structure. The generator works from within a Go module. If you haven't initialized a module yet, you must run go mod init <MODNAME> first.

To initialize a project:

1. Create and enter a new directory.
2. Run go mod init <MODNAME>.
3. Run cobra-cli init.

After initialization, you can run your application using go run main.go. You should edit cmd/root.go to define your application's base logic and description.

cd $HOME/code 
mkdir myapp
cd myapp
go mod init github.com/spf13/myapp
cobra-cli init
go run main.go

To avoid repeating flags, you can create a ~/.cobra.yaml configuration file. This file supports setting default values for author, license, and useViper.

Supported Licenses: GPLv2, GPLv3, LGPL, AGPL, MIT, 2-Clause BSD, or 3-Clause BSD.

You can also define a custom license using header and text keys. The text field supports interpolation for {{ .copyright }} (derived from author and year) and {{ .year }}.

author: Steve Francia <spf@spf13.com>
license: MIT
useViper: true

If built-in licenses are insufficient, use the license object in your configuration to define a custom header and body. The header is used for file headers (no interpolation), and text allows for copyright interpolation.

Example configuration:

author: Steve Francia <spf@spf13.com>
year: 2020
license:
  header: This file is part of CLI application foo.
  text: |
    {{ .copyright }}

    This is my license. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

author: Steve Francia <spf@spf13.com>
year: 2020
license:
  header: This file is part of CLI application foo.
  text: |
    {{ .copyright }}

    This is my license. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
    My license is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must
    master my life.

By default, cobra-cli looks for a configuration file named .cobra.yaml in your home directory. You can specify a custom configuration file using the --config flag. The tool uses Viper to manage these settings, and environment variables are automatically supported via viper.AutomaticEnv().

# Use a custom config file
cobra-cli --config ./my-config.yaml init

If you want to use a license that is not among the built-in options, you can define a custom license by setting the license.header and license.text keys in your configuration file.

• license.header: The specific comment block to be prepended to each generated source file.
• license.text: The full text of the license agreement.

Additionally, the copyright line is generated using the author and year configuration keys. If year is not provided, the current year is used automatically.

When running cobra-cli init, you can use the following flags to configure the generated project:

• --author <name>: Specifies the author name and email.
• --license <license>: Specifies a license (e.g., apache, mit, gplv3).
• --viper: Automatically sets up Viper for handling environment variables and configuration files.

cobra-cli init --author "Steve Francia spf@spf13.com" --license apache --viper

Once a project is initialized, you can add subcommands by calling Command.Create(). This method generates a new Go file in the cmd/ directory named after the command (e.g., cmd/mycommand.go) using the tpl.AddCommandTemplate().

func (c *Command) Create() error

The Project.Create() method performs the initial scaffolding for a new Cobra application. It performs the following actions at the AbsolutePath:

1. Creates the project directory if it does not exist.
2. Generates a main.go file using the tpl.MainTemplate().
3. Creates a cmd/ directory.
4. Generates a cmd/root.go file using the tpl.RootTemplate().
5. Generates a LICENSE file based on the Legal field provided in the Project struct.

func (p *Project) Create() error

The add command supports the following flags to configure how the new command is generated and where it is registered.

-t, --package string 	 target package name (e.g. github.com/spf13/hugo) [DEPRECATED]
-p, --parent string 	 variable name of parent command for this command (default "rootCmd")