declinate 0.0.4

CLI generator.

Declinate

Declinate is a command line interface generator. It is a development tool that parses function type annotations and docstrings to generate Python CLIs:

• It uses builtin language features to describe CLIs.

• Declinate is not a runtime dependency, it compiles to vanilla Python argparse calls during development.

• Generated CLIs use lazy imports, resulting in extremely fast startup time.

• Command completion for Bash and Zsh are added by default.

Getting started

Declinate is published on PyPI and does not have any special dependencies. Simply install with pip:

pip install declinate

The package installs the declinate command to generate a CLI for a python package:

# Print python code to stdout.
declinate generate example_pkg

# Write cli.py module in example_pkg package.
declinate generate -w example_pkg

Of course, declinate’s own CLI is “self-hosting” and can recreate itself:

declinate generate declinate

Declinate expects the python package to declare its command and subcommands in a module named declinate.py. Here is how declinate’s own “check” subcommand is declared:

def check(package: str) -> int:
    """Check if generated cli is up to date.

    Args:
        package: Name of the Python package.

    Returns:
        0 if success.

    """
    if res := check_package(package):
        print(res)
        return 1
    return 0

Take a closer look at the different example CLIs in the tests package that demonstrate the various features.

Documentation

Read the documentation for further information.

Contributing

Thank you for considering to contribute to declinate.

To submit issues or create merge requests please follow the instructions provided in the contribution guide.

By contributing to declinate you accept and agree to the terms and conditions laid out in there.

Development

Clone the repository and setup your local checkout:

git clone https://gitlab.com/ternaris/declinate.git

cd declinate
python -m venv venv
. venv/bin/activate

pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
pip install -e .

This creates a new virtual environment with the necessary python dependencies and installs declinate in editable mode. The declinate code base uses pytest as its test runner, run the test suite by simply invoking:

pytest

To build the documentation from its source run sphinx-build:

sphinx-build -a docs public

The entry point to the local documentation build should be available under public/index.html.

Support

Professional support is available from Ternaris.