Suggetion: Why don't we create `honojs/commander` ?

[ysknsid25]

Hi, @yusukebe, @usualoma

Background

honojs/hono has no dependencies. I believe that reducing dependencies as much as possible is an aesthetic sense not just for honojs/hono but for honojs as a whole :)

By the way, honojs/cli depends on commander.js. commander.js also has no dependencies, but there is no guarantee that there will be no dependencies in the future.

Also, the only commander.js Public API that Hono CLI uses is name, description, version, command, argument, option, action.

So, why not create our own CLI library for honojs/cli and other developers, inspired by commander.js and citty?

Pros / Cons

Pros

• Reduced dependency on third-party libraries.
• We only need to extend the minimum implementation required, while being able to quickly add the features you want.
• (Possibly) reducing build size.

Cons

• We have to maintain it ourselves.
• If we use commander.js, we might find ourself in a situation where you don't need to bother to implement it...

Remarks

Of course, I will be the main implementor of this, and it will eventually replace the commander in the Hono CLI.

[3w36zj6]

FYI, how about node:util's parseArgs()? It's also available in Deno and Bun.

These depend on Node.js specifications, so of course, I also think it would be interesting to implement similar logic in a way that doesn't depend on Node.js.

[ysknsid25]

how about node:util's parseArgs()?

Yes, I think same way. I implemented the same pattern in Secretlint instead of meow.

[kitaharata]

For example, https://palletsprojects.com/ develops not only the Flask Web Application Framework as a core library, but also the Click Command Line Interface Creation Kit.
If there were a CLI toolkit with no dependencies that worked with the same API across Node.js, Deno, Bun, and cloudflare/workerd, it would be useful for building CLI tools such as AI coding agents.

[yusukebe]

Regarding this honojs/cli, I think we can accept it depending on external libraries, unlike honojs/hono.

In honojs/hono, it will be beneficial to create the functions only with Web Standard APIs, but in this honojs/commander, I think there is no advantage over other libraries. Though the file size will be small, we don't do this in the initial development phase of Hono CLI.

It will be a good idea to create a library that supports multiple runtimes, not only Node.js, outside of github.com/honojs. If so, we can use it in this honojs/cli.

[ysknsid25]

Thank you for answearing @yusukebe 🙏
I understand your point of view. I will close this issue.

[yusukebe]

@ysknsid25 Thank you for your understanding!