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by slantview 3536 days ago
I used to use Ruby for CLIs. Then I started using Golang and delivering compiled binaries for each OS that I supported. This has been a game changer for me. With the CLIs that I've worked on that are open source https://github.com/RiotGamesMinions/motherbrain and some other ones in Ruby, we consistently had issues with rubygems and having people be able to run our CLI from version to version.

Using something like Golang for distributing compiled binaries means that as long as they have the CLI, it will continue to work. With Ruby, Python, PHP, etc, there is absolutely no guarantee that your application will work in the future.
2 comments
sotojuan 3536 days ago
I'm not a Go user but I agree. While I make Node CLIs for myself because I'm very quick with JavaScript, I'd choose Go if I was making something for a lot of people!
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yannis 3536 days ago
Go has been a game changer for me also. There is also a very good package https://github.com/spf13/cobra that can make the development of complex CLIs easier.
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aikah 3536 days ago
Go default flag package is pure garbage though. That's a fact. However, Go cross compilation makes it easy to develop multi-os CLI tools. The downside is the size of the executable, it's easy to reach the 50MB bar with Go binaries.
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skj 3536 days ago
Yes. The default "flag" package is trash. I like the Go team a lot, and I think they did a great job with many things, but it seems to me like they just said, "meh, get something that can work, usability is not something that matters."
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ptman 3536 days ago
consider the history, it probably makes sense if you're used to research unix and plan9
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integrii 3534 days ago
How exactly do you create a program in go that compiles to a 50mb exe?

Why is the flags package trash?

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