CLI Starter Project

A comprehensive CLI application starter template built with Rust, featuring subcommands, error handling, logging, and colored output.

Features

• 🚀 Modern CLI Framework: Built with clap for powerful argument parsing
• 🎨 Colored Output: Beautiful terminal output with colored crate
• 📝 Structured Logging: Comprehensive logging with env_logger and log
• ⚡ Async Support: Built-in async/await support with Tokio
• 🛡️ Error Handling: Robust error handling with thiserror
• 🧪 Testing: Ready-to-use testing setup with assert_cmd

Installation

Prerequisites

• Rust 1.70+ (for async traits support)
• Cargo

Build from Source

# Clone or navigate to the project directory
cd cli-starter-project

# Build the project
cargo build --release

# Install globally (optional)
cargo install --path .

Usage

Basic Commands

# Show help
./target/release/cli-starter --help

# Say hello (defaults to "World")
./target/release/cli-starter hello

# Say hello to a specific person
./target/release/cli-starter hello --name "Alice"

# Show version information
./target/release/cli-starter version

# Enable verbose logging
./target/release/cli-starter --verbose hello

Development

# Run in development mode
cargo run

# Run with specific command
cargo run -- hello --name "Bob"

# Run tests
cargo test

# Check code formatting
cargo fmt

# Run clippy linter
cargo clippy

Project Structure

cli-starter-project/
├── Cargo.toml          # Project dependencies and metadata
├── README.md           # This file
└── src/
    ├── main.rs         # Application entry point
    ├── cli.rs          # CLI argument definitions
    ├── error.rs        # Custom error types
    └── commands/       # Command implementations
        ├── mod.rs      # Command module exports
        ├── hello.rs    # Hello command
        └── version.rs  # Version command

Adding New Commands

1. Add the command to src/cli.rs:

   #[derive(Subcommand)]
   pub enum Commands {
       // ... existing commands ...
       NewCommand {
           #[arg(short, long)]
           option: String,
       },
   }
   

2. Create the command module in src/commands/new_command.rs:

   use colored::*;
   use log::info;
   use crate::error::AppError;
   
   pub async fn run(option: String) -> Result<(), AppError> {
       info!("Running new command with option: {}", option);
       println!("{}", "New command executed!".green().bold());
       Ok(())
   }
   

3. Export the module in src/commands/mod.rs:

   pub mod new_command;
   pub use new_command::*;
   

4. Add the command handler in src/main.rs:

   match cli.command {
       // ... existing matches ...
       Some(commands::Commands::NewCommand { option }) => {
           new_command::run(option).await?;
       }
   }
   

Configuration

The project includes optional dependencies for configuration management:

• serde and serde_json for JSON configuration files
• toml for TOML configuration files

To enable these features, uncomment the relevant dependencies in Cargo.toml.

Testing

The project includes integration testing setup:

# Run all tests
cargo test

# Run specific test
cargo test test_hello_command

# Run tests with output
cargo test -- --nocapture

Contributing

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch
3. Make your changes
4. Add tests for new functionality
5. Run the test suite
6. Submit a pull request

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgments

• clap - Command line argument parsing
• colored - Terminal colors
• tokio - Async runtime
• thiserror - Error handling