GLI lets you create command-suite (i.e. git-like) style applications in Ruby very easily.

Install if you need to:

> gem install gli

The simplest way to get started is to create a scaffold project. For example, a command-suite app named "todo" that has the commands "list", "add" and "complete" is created with:

> gli init todo list add complete

A new ./todo directory is created containing the app. View the basic output of the scaffold with:

> cd todo
> bundle exec bin/todo help

Which will output:

NAME
    todo - Describe your application here
SYNOPSIS
    todo [global options] command [command options] [arguments...]
VERSION
    0.0.1
GLOBAL OPTIONS
    -f, --flagname=The name of the argument - Describe some flag here (default: the default)
    --help                                  - Show this message
    -s, --[no-]switch                       - Describe some switch here
COMMANDS
    add      - Describe add here
    complete - Describe complete here
    help     - Shows a list of commands or help for one command
    list     - Describe list here
  > bin/todo help list
  NAME
      list - Describe list here
  SYNOPSIS
      todo [global options] list [command options] Describe arguments to list here
  COMMAND OPTIONS
      -f arg - Describe a flag to list (default: default)
      -s     - Describe a switch to list

As you can see, a lot of work has been done fore you, in terms of help output and command-line parsing. This is the point of GLI. All you need to do is fill in your app-specific logic.

The scaffold project that was created in ./todo comes with:

• executable in ./todo/bin/todo. This file demonstrates most of what you need to describe your command line interface.
• an empty test in ./todo/test/default_test.rb that can bootstrap your tests as well as a basic feature file in features that you can run via aruba to do BDD-style tests
• a ./todo.gemspec shell
• a README shell
• Rakefile that can generate RDoc, package your Gem, and run tests
• A Gemfile suitable for use with Bundler to manage development-time dependencies

See Features for a longer list of GLI's features. Also, see an Example of a gli program.

• Reference - List of all DSL methods for GLI
• Subcommands - How to create subcommands
• Controlling Help Output - More details on the various options available for controlling the output of the auto-generated help commands
• Declaring flags and switches - more details on the options available for declaring flags and switches
• Changelog - What's new in each version
• Contributing - How to contribute patches
• Developing - How to set up your development environment for GLI
• RubyDoc
• Source