Dealing with HelpNeeded

[ioquatix]

Hi.

I want to implement help for sub-commands, e.g.

mycommand subcommand --help

The best way I can see to do this is to somehow override the exception handling but I was wondering if there was a better way?

[nanobowers]

@ioquatix maybe something like this hack of the sub-command example?

#!/bin/env ruby
require 'trollop'

SUB_COMMANDS = %w(delete copy)
global_opts = Trollop::options do
  banner "magic file deleting and copying utility"
  opt :dry_run, "Don't actually do anything", :short => "-n"
  stop_on SUB_COMMANDS
end

cmd = ARGV.shift # get the subcommand
cmd_opts = case cmd
  when "delete" # parse delete options
    Trollop::options do
      banner "Different banner for delete command"
      opt :force, "Force deletion"
      opt :help, "Customized other help message for delete"
    end
  when "copy"  # parse copy options
    Trollop::options do
      banner "Yet another banner for copy command"
      opt :double, "Copy twice for safety's sake"
    end
  else
    Trollop::die "unknown subcommand #{cmd.inspect}, should be one of #{SUB_COMMANDS}"
  end

puts "Global options: #{global_opts.inspect}"
puts "Subcommand: #{cmd.inspect}"
puts "Subcommand options: #{cmd_opts.inspect}"
puts "Remaining arguments: #{ARGV.inspect}"

[ioquatix]

@nanobowers Thanks so much for a useful example.

In the end, my needs were too great for trollop, a library which I really loved. I still think it's an awesome library, but I ended up reinventing the wheel, and the results have been great so far.

https://github.com/ioquatix/samovar

It's still a work in progress.