hint-cli 0.2.0

Hint exists to get help on commands from the command line, without switching context or applications.

hint

Hint exists to get help on commands from the command line, without switching context or applications.

Project status

This is currently a POC project I'm using to see what I find useful and how I want the project to develop. For all intents and purposes this tool is completely unsupported. I make no guarantees about backwards compatibility or commitment to responding to issues or PRs. It is a personal project which I'm happy to share, as open source software licensed with the MIT license if you find it useful and/or want any changes I would suggest forking this repo.

Installation

Recommended installation method is with pipx.

pipx install hint-cli

Usage

The first time you run hint <topic> it will prompt for a url for the hint source. Use https://raw.githubusercontent.com/agarthetiger/hint/master/docs/examples/ as an example. It is expected that you will create your own content and add your own url later. The only topic in the example repo is bash.

• hint bash - Display the formatted contents of https://raw.githubusercontent.com/agarthetiger/hint/master/docs/examples/bash.md
• hint bash curl - Display only the curl subsection from the bash.md file. Valid subsections are any level headings in the markdown document.
• hint --help - Get help

Details

For the first POC this cli will pull information from GitHub from a fixed repository, branch and folder and display the contents on the command line. The markdown will be structured using headings which can also be specified.

hint is written for you to create your own content, for whatever useful information you would like to access from the command line. It is expected that you will setup your own repository with your own hints.

Alternatives

If you want a tool which pulls community content rather than writing your own, look at cheat.sh. It provides "unified access to the best community driven cheat sheets repositories of the world".

Requirements

• User has permissions to install software on the target system.
• System has internet access to github.com

Concept

I use GitHub Pages and MKDocs as well as other Notes applications to collect technical information which I personally find useful. I have a few cheat-sheets with reminders on commands I use regularly but infrequently. The man and info commands provide help on most commands, however they are very detailed and more useful commands often involve multiple cli tools. Examples bridge the gap between the low level documentation and complex infrequent commands which won't necessarily be in the command history for the current system.

Often I'm using a terminal within PyCharm or VS Code and it's undesirable to switch context to a different application, navigate to a site which may not be open, get the right page and click or scroll to the relevant section. It's not an insurmountable problem, but a workflow which I wanted to optimise.

This tool was inspired in multiple ways by Thomas Stringer's post on My Personal Wiki … Now Through the Terminal. The fact that I stumbled across this while searching for something else is validation for having a tool and workflow which enables me to remain in the IDE and not switch to a browser. It's similar to taking an alcoholic to a pub and constantly offering them a drink, then saying it's his fault if he ends up drinking. Sure, there is some level of personal responsibility with the alcoholic to resist but a better solution would be to avoid the pub. hint keeps me focussed, puts the information I need at my fingertips away from distractions.