Guidelines or standards for command line interfaces (CLI)

Question

Are there generic rules or guidelines meant to improve the ease of use or user experience with a command line interface (CLI)?

Maybe even some attempt at standardization?

In my case I'm trying to follow the ideas of git and I'm using Python with the click package which already sets some "framework".

http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/standard-options.html There are just standards, you are free to do as you want. It's just that if you don't present as it is done in lots of cli programs, your users will be annoyed. — Pierre Emmanuel Lallemant, Dec 31 '15 at 15:02
The GNU Project has some [CLI standards](https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Command_002dLine-Interfaces.html), which are based on the POSIX standards. — Mike Harris, Dec 31 '15 at 15:03

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 09 '21 at 16:58

2

We created clig.dev for this purpose.

answered Apr 09 '21 at 16:58

Carl Tashian

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 15 '18 at 04:34

You can take example on cobra (used by docker or kubernetes) as an example of a complete CLI framework, one with:

Most of those are also implemented with Python click.

2 Answers2