cargo-script-mvs VS structopt

The eRFC was intentionally light on details so the Pre-RFC / IRLO thread and the demo best reflect what we hope to accomplish which are pretty detailed as-is.

> A) is easy to write one off scripts that do a job fast, with minimal thinking and effort. I am thinking of Python and Ruby. For me I can write code with high velocity in these languages.

Once I wrap up some other projects, I plan to explore this space a little bit within Rust.

imo the biggest bang for the buck is just having good `#!` support. Probably mid-year I expect to have a Pre-RFC up for single-file cargo packages. See https://github.com/epage/cargo-script-mvs/discussions/15.

A bigger effort is a batteries included, non-zero cost stdlib. I've started writing up my thoughts at https://github.com/ergo-rs/ergo.

For more background on why I think these are important, see https://epage.github.io/blog/2021/09/learning-rust/.

Would love feedback on these ideas and other ways to make Rust easy to use without sacrificing what makes Rust it is.

This is something I'm interested. Every time I write a bash or Python script, I think "why didn't I do this in Rust?". The first barrier is in the same line as your thoughts which is why I've been investigating the various cargo-script spin-offs and working towards an MVP for a Pre-RFC.

Something I've been thinking a lot about for Rust is what can and should a REPL experience be for a compiled language (ie what are reasonable compromises).

There seem to be two repls that haven't gotten much traction:

- https://github.com/google/evcxr/blob/main/evcxr_repl/README....

- https://github.com/sigmaSd/IRust

There have been little and big nits that have held me back from wanting to push these further, including

- Bad defaults (having to opt-in to panic handling)

- Command syntax feeling out of place and likely not beginner friendly

- Limits on variable preservation

- Lack of introspection (at least irust as `:type`)

So far I've been punting on wanting to improve this area by instead focusing on polishing up a rust script solution in the hopes of getting it merged: https://github.com/epage/cargo-script-mvs

rust-script is the most up-to-date version I could find. See https://github.com/epage/cargo-script-mvs/discussions/15

cargo-script has been forked or reimplemented several times.

cargo-script: I've done some initial analysis and recorded my thoughts on what cargo-script in Rust should look like. If people are interested in this or other individual / company on-boarding improvements, I'd love to talk!

Fully agree with this though I also feel there is room for experimentation and improvement in this area. I've previously blogged on this and have started researching cargo-script. Hopefully later I'll get to my standard-adjacent library.

Hope you are aware that structopt is in maintenance mode and is merged into clap as of v3.

As I understood you need to implement a command line argument parser for that you can use clap https://github.com/clap-rs/clap or structopt https://github.com/TeXitoi/structopt.

I feel like discovering moves like this is a weakness in the ecosystem today. You can check out some of our discussion on raising visibility

Something I've been giving thought to is how to help structopt users discover that clap3 is their upgrade path. We've put notices in the structopt repo but cargo upgrade and docs.rs won't say anything. See https://github.com/TeXitoi/structopt/issues/525 for more ideas we're considering.

For myself, I have found serde.rs really useful for undertanding their derives while I've always been frustrated with finding anything in structopt's documentation, so I modeled it more off of serde. This ended up both being in structure and not being in docs.rs. I think it really was the structure that was the frustration point for me but there was interest elsewhere in moving stuff out of docs.rs.

I think it would be nice to have a comparison to clap-derive and/or structopt in the README, as that is what I expect most users would compare this to. The subcommand handling looks especially cumbersome compared to deriving on structs and enums.

However, the one place I'm a little curious to rewrite things is the CLI... every time we have to deal with cobra I long for Rust's structopt.

Have you tried https://github.com/TeXitoi/structopt ?

It is written in Rust using the structopt and swayipc crates. It is published on crates.io. The repository is hosted on GitLab. The repository is mirrored on GitHub.

I use structopt, which itself uses clap.