meta

README

meta

meta is a meta command line interface (CLI) that creates subcommands automatically from the executables found in the PATH environment variable.

The user experience is focused on:

• simple initial setup
• ease of adding subcommands
• allowing any exectuable

The top level command can be setup by simply symlinking to /usr/bin/meta. For example, this creates a new top level hello command:

$ go install github.com/calebcase/meta@latest
$ ln -s "$(which meta)" ~/bin/hello

Executing hello without arguments will output help and exit non-zero:

$ hello
Usage: hello COMMAND

Subcommands are created through a simple naming convention command_subcommand. For example, this creates a world subcommand:

$ cat <<EOF >~/bin/hello_world
#!/bin/bash
set -euo pipefail

printf 'Hello World!\n'
EOF
$ chmod u+x ~/bin/hello_world

NOTE: Subcommands can be any executable file. We've used bash here as an example, but this could also be a python script, a binary, etc.

Now when hello outputs usage it has the world subcommand automatically:

$ hello
Usage: hello COMMAND

Commands:
  world

Running the subcommand:

$ hello world
Hello World!