uutils-args/design

uutils-args Design Docs

This is a series of design documents, explaining the various design goals and decisions. Before diving in, let's lay out the design goals of this project.

• Must support all options in GNU coreutils.
• Must support a many-to-many relationship between options and settings.
• Must have a convenient derive API.
• Must support help strings from file.
• Code must be "greppable" (e.g. search file for --all to find the code for that argument).
• Maintainability is more important than terseness.
• With a bit of luck, it will be smaller and faster than clap, because we have fewer features to support.
• Use outside uutils is possible but not prioritized. Hence, configurability beyond the coreutils is not necessary.
• Errors must be at least as good as GNU's, but may be different (hopefully improved).

Pages

1. Arguments in coreutils
2. Problems with clap and other parsers
3. Library design (TODO once the design settles)