automist

Create a CLI from human readable documentation

The automist takes a descriptor object and produces configuration for minimist.

• It can also generate a nice help message and an even nicer manpage.
• Bonus: There are no dependencies.

Installation

You now the drill. Just npm install it and your good.

npm install --save automist

Usage

First, document your CLI. We use YAML because its easy on the eyes. Coffeescript may also be an option.

In your application, you would feed this readme object to the automist and use it to

• configure your minimist so it parses the command line in accordance with your documentation
• generate a useful help message

Have a look at a working example. Try:

coffee example/main.coffee --help
coffee example/main.coffee --manpage | man -l -

Future Plans

process markdown input

On the input side, it might be nice to extract the readme-object from a markdown. This would be nice for github projects, where it is very common to have a README.md file as your primary form of documentation.