diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index 47f2efc..6bd793e 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -5,187 +5,32 @@ [![Go Report Card](https://goreportcard.com/badge/github.com/rwxrob/bonzai)](https://goreportcard.com/report/github.com/rwxrob/bonzai) -Meticulously manicured monolith and multicall binaries, built from -imported composite commands, on any device, with recursive, light-weight -tab completion, and richly rendered embedded documentation. Replace -messy collections of shell scripts, completion scripts, and separate man -pages with clean Go code compiled into a single, portable command. +> "It's like a modular, multicall BusyBox builder for Go with built in completion and embedded documentation support." -## Getting Started +> "The utility here is that Bonzai lets you maintain your own personal 'toolbox' with built in auto-complete that you can assemble from various Go modules. Individual commands are isolated and unaware of each other and possibly maintained by other people." -Copy or clone the example template: +![logo](logo.png) -👆 +Bonzai was born from a very real need to replace messy collections of shell scripts, wasteful completion sourcing, and OS-specific documentation with a single, stateful, binary composed of commands organized as rooted node trees with a clean, modular, portable, statically-compiled, and dynamically self-documenting design. -Study the personal, script-replacing monolith/multicall that started it -all: +There's no better language than Go for such things. -👆 +Bonzai gets its name from the fact that Bonzai users are fond of meticulously manicuring their own stateful command trees, built from imported composite commands that they can easily copy and run on on any device, anywhere. Bonzai users can easily share their own commands with others just like they would any other Go module and since any Bonzai command also doubles as a high-level library package, even non-Bonzai users benefit. But where Bonzai really separates itself from anything else ever created is that any Bonzai command branch can be turned into a fully-documented, tab-completing stand-alone or multi-call binary by wrapping it in five lines of code and compiling. Such is the beautiful advantage of their stateful command tree design. There's simply nothing else like it. -## Go Bonzai! +## Getting Started -![logo](logo.png) +1. Read the book: + +* https://github.com/rwxrob/book-bonzai + +1. Copy or clone the example template: + +* https://github.com/rwxrob/bonzai-example + +1. Get ideas for your own by looking at others -Yes, "banzai" is something people yell going into battle, and battle is -exactly what it feels like to conquer your monstrous collection of shell -scripts, completion bloated rc files, and man pages (if you even got -that far). - -"Bonsai" trees are well-manicured, meticulously crafted, -miniature *real* trees that rival their larger cousins, much like a -Bonzai composite command tree. - -Bonzai trees are unlike anything you've likely encountered so far, no -getopt dashes, no ugly commander interface language to learn, no 12637 -lines of shell tab completion bloat to source before your command will -complete, just well manicured -nested-tab-complete-with-magical-aliases-enabled commands organized into -rooted node trees for your command-line enjoyment. Your right-pinky will -be particularly grateful. - -## "It's spelled bonsai/banzai." - -We know. The domains were taken. Plus, this makes it more unique and -easier to find once you know the strange spelling we chose to use. Sorry -if that triggers your OCD. - -If you must know, the primary motivator was the similarity to a -well-manicured tree (since it is for creating trees of composite -commands). - -The misunderstood word "banzai" is 'a traditional Japanese idiom -meaning "ten thousand years" of long life,' a cheer used in -celebrations like "Hurrah" or "Viva".' So combining the notion of a -happy, well-manicured, beautiful tree and "ten thousand years of -long life" works out just fine for us. - -And, yes, Buckaroo Banzai was always a favorite. We like to think he -would use Bonzai today to make amazing things and last for a long time -to defeat evil aliens and save the world. - -It turns out that the "call to war" associated with Bonzai is not -entirely without merit as well. Bonzai is excellent for unorthodox, -rapid applications development (instead of writing scripts) and makes -short work of creating offensive and defensive tool kits all wrapping -into one nice Go multicall binary, popular for building single-binary -Linux container distros like BusyBox and Alpine, as well as root kits, -and other security tools - -## "Why not just use Cobra?" - -We get this question a lot, the answer is --- honest. - -Just because something is popular (or first) doesn't mean it was well -designed. In fact, often inferior designs are rushed to market just to -gain adoption. Cobra seems to suffer from this. Discerning developers -and engineers have been not-so-quietly complaining about Cobra's -horrible design for years. It's time for something new. Read on if you -want the specific reasons. - -* **Cobra tab completion is wasteful and error-prone.** - - Cobra often requires sourcing thousands of lines of shell code every - time you run a new shell that needs to use a Cobra command with shell - tab completion (`kubectl` requires 12637). It is not uncommon for - operations people to be sourcing 100s of thousands of lines of shell - code just to enable basic completion that could have been enabled - easily with `complete -C` instead. Bonzai manages all completion in Go - instead of shell and therefore allows the modular addition of any - number of Completers including the standard file completion as well as - calculators, dates, and anything anyone can conceive of completing. - Completion is not dependent on any underlying operating system. Any - Bonzai command can provide its own completion algorithm or use one of - the many already provided. Cobra can never do this. - -* **Cobra is not designed to be a command compositor at all.** - - This is really unfortunate because the designers missed a golden - opportunity. Bonzai branches can be imported and composed into other - branches and monoliths with just a few lines of Go. Registries of - Bonzai commands can be easily inferred from dependencies on the - `bonzai` package and creators are free to compose their monoliths or - multicall binaries from a rich eco-system of Bonzai branches and - commands. Bonzai allows creation of Go multicall binary monoliths - (like BusyBox) to be made easily, and from a diverse, modular, - importable, composable sources. Such is simply not possible with Cobra - and never will be. - -* **Cobra suffers from broken boomer "getopt" design.** - - The world has finally realizing just how bad dashed arguments and - options have always been for good human-computer interactions from the - command line, perhaps because more regular people are using command - line interfaces, like chat apps from their laptops and phones. People - simply cannot remember all sorts of ungodly combinations of dashes and - equals signs hoping things will just work, and they certainly cannot - speak any getopt command into their phone and have it interpreted - correctly. With Bonzai they can. Bonzai UX is universal whether it be - from an Arch Linux command line or Slack app on an iPhone. - - Bonzai takes a no-dashes approach with aliases promoting cleaner, - understandable command lines with context and promotion of domain - specific languages (created with PEGN, scan.X, or others) that easily - translate directly to chat and other command-line interfaces that most - humans can use without even looking up the documentation, which, by - the way, is embedded in any Bonzai command tree. - -* **Cobra provides bad, brittle, command documentation.** - - Cobra documentation is virtually unreadable in source form. And Cobra - provides no means of markup or use of color and doesn't even promote - the same look and feel of manual page documentation. - - In contrast, Bonzai has its own subset of Markdown, BonzaiMark, which - respects the well established readability of manual pages, and allows - for the creation of elegant, templated documentation that can be - viewed from the command line or easily from a local browser on the - same computer running the command. Bonzai command documentation is as - easy to read in source form as the documentation itself. - - Bonzai documentation is also dynamic. Rather than refer to a - configuration file the path to that specific file can be dynamically - included in the fully `text/template` enabled embedded documentation. - Cobra doesn't have anything even close to this. - -* **Cobra suffers from crushing technical debt.** - - The problems listed (and more) are never going to come out of Cobra. - Because it is filled with bad design decisions and was rushed to - market without serious consideration for its API, it is now doomed to - never lose its warts (kinda like JavaScript). There is no possible way - it can ever upgrade to address the very reasonable modern expectations - for good command line user experiences. No wonder you never see people - using Cobra for their replace-my-shell-scripts utilities. Cobra is - simply horrible for this. Thankfully, Bonzai is a fresh, extensible, - sustainable, human-friendly command compositor to take us into the - future of command line interfaces. - -* **Cobra interfaces are nearly impossible to test.** - - Ever tried creating tests for all the different Cobra option - combinations? It's a case study in the science of exponential problem - complexity. By using a rooted node tree of commands, which - observe cached variables or singular configuration, Bonzai makes short - work of writing even the highest-level of tests against the commands - themselves as if they were run by a user. - -## What People Are Saying - -> "It's like a modular, multicall BusyBox builder for Go with built in -> completion and embedded documentation support." - -> "The utility here is that Bonzai lets you maintain your own personal -> 'toolbox' with built in auto-complete that you can assemble from -> various Go modules. Individual commands are isolated and unaware of -> each other and possibly maintained by other people." (tadasv123) - -## Acknowledgements - -The community has been constantly involved -with the development of this project, making suggestions about -everything from my use of `init()`, to the name "bonzai". While all their -contributions are too numerous to name specifically, they -more than deserve a huge thank you here. +* https://github.com/rwxrob/z +* https://github.com/rwxrob/pomo ## Legal