Description

Boson is a modular command/task framework. Thanks to its rich set of plugins, it differentiates itself from rake and thor by being usable from irb and the commandline, having automated views generated by hirb and allowing libraries to be written as plain ruby. Works with on all major rubies for ruby >= 1.9.2

New Boson

Starting with 1.0, boson has changed significantly. Please read the upgrading doc if you have an older version or if your reading about boson predates 2012.

Boson has been rewritten to have a smaller core (no dependencies) with optional plugins to hook into its various features. The major focus of 1.0 has been to provide an easy way for third-party gems to create their executable and define subcommands with options.

Docs

Nicely formatted docs are available here.

Example Executable

For a gem with an executable, bin/cow:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'boson/runner'

class CowRunner < Boson::Runner
  option :urgent, type: :boolean
  def say(text, options={})
    text.capitalize! if options[:urgent]
    puts text
  end

  def moo
    puts "MOOOO"
  end
end

CowRunner.start

You can now execute cow with say and moo subcommands:

$ cow say hungry
hungry
$ cow moo
MOOOO
# use say's urgent option
$ cow say hungry -urgent
HUNGRY

You'll notice that this syntax is powerful and concise and is very similar to thor's API. Subcommands map to ruby methods and the class represents the executable.

For some examples of executables see vimdb or tag.

Comparison to Thor

Since boson and it's rewrite are both heavily inspired by thor, it makes sense to compare them.

First, what I consider pros boson has over thor. Boson

  • is designed to handle plugins. This means it core parts are extendable by modules and core components like commands can have arbitrary metadata associated with them.
  • has a rich set of plugins. See boson-more.
  • has commands that are easily testable. Whereas thor has options that automagically appear in command methods, boson explicitly passes options to its command method as a hash i.e. MyRunner.new.subcommand(arg, verbose: true). This also allows commands to just be called as ruby, with no magic to consider.
  • supports custom-user option types i.e. creating a Date option type. See Boson::Options.
  • supports custom method decorators i.e. methods like desc that add functionality to a command. While boson supports option, options, desc and config out of the box, users can create their own.
  • automatically creates usage for your subcommand. With thor you need to manually define your usage with desc: desc "SOME USAGE", "SOME DESCRIPTION"
  • is lenient about descriptions. Describe commands at your leisure. With thor you must define a desc.
  • has a smaller blacklist for command names i.e. just Kernel + Object method names. Thor has a bigger blacklist due to its design.

Now for pros thor has over boson. Thor

  • is widely used and thus has been community QAed thoroughly.
  • supports generators as a major feature.
  • is more stable as its feature set is mostly frozen.
  • is used by rails and thus is guaranteed support for some time.
  • supports ruby 1.8.7.
  • TODO: I'm sure there's more

Writing Plugins

The most common way to write a plugin is to extend one of the many method hooks available. Any methods that are defined in an API or APIClassMethods module are extendable. For example, if you want to extend what any boson-based executable does first, extend BareRunner.start:

module CustomStartUp
  def start(*)
    super
    # additional startup
  end
end

BareRunner.extend CustomStartUp

Notice that extend was used to extend a class method. To extend an instance method you would use include. Also notice that you use super in an overridden method to call original functionality. If you don't, you're possibly overridden existing functionality, which is fine as long as you know what you are overriding.

For many plugin examples, see boson-more.

Bugs/Issues

Please report them on github. If the issue is about upgrading from old boson, please file it in boson-more.

Contributing

See here

Motiviation

Motivation for the new boson is all the damn executables I'm making.

Credits

Boson stands on the shoulders of these people and their ideas:

  • Contributors: @mirell, @martinos
  • Yehuda Katz for Thor and its awesome option parser (Boson::OptionParser).
  • Daniel Berger for his original work on thor's option parser.
  • Chris Wanstrath for inspiring Boson's libraries with Rip's packages.