131b37fff8
Allow custom help providers * Version option will show in help even with a default command * Reserve `-v` and `--version` as special Spectre.Console command line arguments (nb. breaking change for Spectre.Console users who have a default command with a settings class that uses either of these switches). * Help writer correctly determines if trailing commands exist and whether to display them as optional or mandatory in the usage statement. * Ability to control the number of indirect commands to display in the help text when the command itself doesn't have any examples of its own. Defaults to 5 (for backward compatibility) but can be set to any integer or zero to disable completely. * Significant increase in unit test coverage for the help writer. * Minor grammatical improvements to website documentation.
2.1 KiB
Title: Command Help Order: 13 Description: "Console applications built with Spectre.Console.Cli include automatically generated help command line help."
Console applications built with Spectre.Console.Cli include automatically generated help which is displayed when -h or --help has been specified on the command line.
The automatically generated help is derived from the configured commands and their command settings.
The help is also context aware and tailored depending on what has been specified on the command line before it. For example,
-
When
-hor--helpappears immediately after the application name (eg.application.exe --help), then the help displayed is a high-level summary of the application, including any command line examples and a listing of all possible commands the user can execute. -
When
-hor--helpappears immediately after a command has been specified (eg.application.exe command --help), then the help displayed is specific to the command and includes information about command specific switches and any default values.
HelpProvider is the Spectre.Console class responsible for determining context and preparing the help text to write to the console. It is an implementation of the public interface IHelpProvider.
Custom help providers
Whilst it shouldn't be common place to implement your own help provider, it is however possible.
You are able to implement your own IHelpProvider and configure a CommandApp to use that instead of the Spectre.Console help provider.
using Spectre.Console.Cli;
namespace Help;
public static class Program
{
public static int Main(string[] args)
{
var app = new CommandApp<DefaultCommand>();
app.Configure(config =>
{
// Register the custom help provider
config.SetHelpProvider(new CustomHelpProvider(config.Settings));
});
return app.Run(args);
}
}
There is a working example of a custom help provider demonstrating this.