How can I suppress the output of the usage when the CLI is called without flags and subcommands?

[wols]

I have a CLI with some subcommands.
How can I suppress the output of the usage when the CLI is called without flags and subcommands?
The standard help should only be accessible with the --help flag.

$ cli

$ cli --help
CLI - My CLI

Usage:
  cli [OPTIONS] COMMAND
  cli [COMMAND] --help | -h
  cli --version | -v

[DannyBen]

Why would you want to do it?

[DannyBen]

The only way I can think of to do this now, is by abusing the default command, private and catch_all for good measure:

name: cli
help: Sample application
version: 0.1.0

commands:
- name: __dummy
  private: true
  default: force
  catch_all: true   # <== "./cli anything unrecognized" will also print nothing

- name: download
  alias: d
  help: Download a file

- name: upload
  alias: u
  help: Upload a file

and in the dummy command code:

# noop
:

Since this is not at all a common practice to have a CLI output nothing, there is no natural way to do it in bashly.
If you explain your use case, we can discuss more to see if it needs a non hacky solution.

[wols]

I have written a CLI (vaultssh - not yet publicly available), which I want to use as a ANSIBLE_VAULT_PASSWORD_FILE.

The password source can be either a plain-text file or an executable script [my CLI].
If the file has the executable permission, the plugin runs it as a script and uses its stdout as the password.
When a vault ID is configured, the plugin passes --vault-id as arguments to the script;
otherwise the script is called with no arguments [this is the usage in question].

In the case of a call without arguments (or subcommands), the usage is currently output.
This already leads to an error when loading the Ansible configuration:
ERROR! Vault password script /usr/local/bin/vaultssh returned non-zero (1)

[DannyBen]

So - running the CLI without arguments should output something no?
It sounds like you need to create a simple CLI without subcommands, and only with args (--vault-id) and then the root command is where you decide what to output.

[wols]

There are subcommands for encrypt, decrypt and some more for user management.

But the decisive factor was the reference to default: force.
I was able to achieve the desired behavior - cool!
I will mark it as a solution.

[DannyBen]

Yes, if you have a script with subcommands and still want the "root" to do something, then default is the way to go.