Command-line Applications
=========================

.. todo:: Explain "Command-line Applications"

Clint
-----

`clint <https://pypi.python.org/pypi/clint/>`_ is a Python module which is
filled with very useful tools for developing command-line applications.
It supports features such as; CLI Colors and Indents, Simple and Powerful
Column Printer, Iterator based progress bar and Implicit argument handling.

Click
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`click <http://click.pocoo.org/>`_ is an upcoming Python package for creating
command-line interfaces in a composable way with as little amount of code as
necessary. It’s the “Command-line Interface Creation Kit”. It’s highly
configurable but comes with good defaults out of the box.

docopt
------

`docopt <http://docopt.org/>`_ is a lightweight, highly Pythonic package that
allows creating command-line interfaces easily and intuitively, by parsing
POSIX-style usage instructions.

Plac
------

`Plac <https://pypi.python.org/pypi/plac>`_ is a Python module that allows developing command-line applications. In fact
plac is a simple wrapper over the Python standard library `argparse <http://docs.python.org/2/library/argparse.html>`_, it hides most of its
complexity by using a declarative interface: the argument parser is inferred
rather than written down by imperatively. It is targetting especially unsophisticated
users, programmers, sys-admins, scientists and in general people writing throw-away
scripts for themselves, choosing the command-line interface because it is quick
and simple.

Cliff
------

`Cliff <https://cliff.readthedocs.org/en/latest>`_  is a framework for building command-line programs.
It uses setuptools entry points to provide subcommands, output formatters, and other extensions. The framework
is meant to be used to create multi-level commands such as subversion and git, where the main program handles
some basic argument parsing and then invokes a sub-command to do the work.