3 ms·

I would also say library quality can be generally low. E.g. there are numerous flag parsing libraries but not a single one comes even close to clap in rust.

demi56 2y ago
You can’t just compare a library from another language, because they’re different, if all flag parsing library were inspired by Clap it’ll be a living nightmare for language that isn’t rust
- sureglymop 2y ago
  Why can't I compare a library from another language? I have spent a significant amount of time with all of the popular flag parsing libraries in Go and none were as flexible yet easy to work with as clap. Anyway, I am not necessarily talking about syntax but moreso about the feature sets and overall quality.
  - demi56 2y ago
    [dead]
maleldil 2y ago
spf13/cobra and urfave/cli are fine, I think. As sibling said, you can't expect Go to have something like Rust's clap because the metaprogramming capabilities are so different. On the other hand, I find it sad how terrible stdlib's flag library is. I'd love to have something like Python's argparse, which is not perfect but enough for most of the time. Go's flag doesn't even work well for small programs. It should've been more like spf13/pflag, but as we've often seen with Go, they went "screw decades-old conventions" and did something strictly worse.
- majewsky 2y ago
  As far as I understand, they respected decades-old conventions. Just not the ones we needed (Plan9 instead of POSIX/GNU getopt).
- bbkane 2y ago
  On the other hand, if you're looking for a side project, writing your own flag parsing library is a lot of fun! I've been sinking time into mine for a few years and it's always really satisfying to use in my CLIs
- sureglymop 2y ago
  I have tried all of these. They all have their niceties but they also have their problems. They do not come close to clap in flexibility though. Argparse from python is nice, you're right. Thanks for explaining that, i'll look into how different the metaprogramming capabilities are.

demi56 2y ago

You can’t just compare a library from another language, because they’re different, if all flag parsing library were inspired by Clap it’ll be a living nightmare for language that isn’t rust

sureglymop 2y ago
Why can't I compare a library from another language? I have spent a significant amount of time with all of the popular flag parsing libraries in Go and none were as flexible yet easy to work with as clap. Anyway, I am not necessarily talking about syntax but moreso about the feature sets and overall quality.
- demi56 2y ago
  [dead]

maleldil 2y ago

spf13/cobra and urfave/cli are fine, I think. As sibling said, you can't expect Go to have something like Rust's clap because the metaprogramming capabilities are so different. On the other hand, I find it sad how terrible stdlib's flag library is. I'd love to have something like Python's argparse, which is not perfect but enough for most of the time. Go's flag doesn't even work well for small programs. It should've been more like spf13/pflag, but as we've often seen with Go, they went "screw decades-old conventions" and did something strictly worse.

majewsky 2y ago
As far as I understand, they respected decades-old conventions. Just not the ones we needed (Plan9 instead of POSIX/GNU getopt).
bbkane 2y ago
On the other hand, if you're looking for a side project, writing your own flag parsing library is a lot of fun! I've been sinking time into mine for a few years and it's always really satisfying to use in my CLIs
sureglymop 2y ago
I have tried all of these. They all have their niceties but they also have their problems. They do not come close to clap in flexibility though. Argparse from python is nice, you're right. Thanks for explaining that, i'll look into how different the metaprogramming capabilities are.