Console

Closed-loop application library for Cobra commands

(ready-to-use menus, prompts, completions, and more)

Console is an all-in-one console application library built on top of a readline shell and using Cobra commands. It aims to provide users with a modern interface at at minimal cost while allowing them to focus on developing their commands and application core: the console will then transparently interface with these commands, and provide the various features below almost for free.

Features

Menus & Commands

• Bind cobra commands to provide the core functionality.
• Multiple menus with their own command tree, prompt engines and special handlers.
• All cobra settings can be modified, set and used freely, like in normal CLI workflows.
• Bind handlers to special interrupt errors (eg. CtrlC/CtrlD), per menu.

Shell interface

• Shell is powered by a readline instance, with full inputrc support and extended functionality.
• All features of readline are supported in the console. It also allows the console to give:
• Configurable bind keymaps, commands and options, sane defaults, and per-application configuration.
• Out-of-the-box, advanced completions for commands, flags, positional and flag arguments.
• Provided by readline and carapace: automatic usage & validation command/flags/args hints.
• Syntax highlighting for commands (might be extended in the future).

Others

• Support for an arbitrary number of history sources, per menu.
• Support for oh-my-posh prompts, per menu and with custom configuration files for each.
• Also with oh-my-posh, write and bind application/menu-specific prompt segments.
• Set of ready-to-use commands (commands/ directory) for readline binds/options manipulation.

Documentation

You can install and use the example application console. This example application will give you a taste of the behavior and supported features. The following documentation is also available in the wiki:

• Getting started
• Menus
• Prompts
• Binding commands
• Interrupt handlers
• History Sources
• Logging
• Readline shell
• Other utilities

Showcase

Status

The library is in a pre-release candidate status:

• Although quite simple and small, it has not been tested heavily.
• There are probably some features/improvements to be made.
• The API is quite stable. It is unlikely to change much in future versions.

Please open a PR or an issue if you wish to bring enhancements to it. Other contributions, as well as bug fixes and reviews are also welcome.

Possible Improvements

The following is a currently moving list of possible enhancements to be made in order to reach v1.0:

• Ensure to the best extent possible a thread-safe access to the command API.
• Clearer integration/alignment of the various I/O references between raw readline and commands.
• Clearer and sane model for asynchronous control/cancel of commands.
• Test suite for most important or risky code paths.