[Cryptech Tech] Command line interface

Fredrik Thulin fredrik at thulin.net
Tue May 3 18:55:43 UTC 2016


On Tuesday, May 03, 2016 02:23:20 PM Rob Austein wrote:
> I looked for usable libraries with better licenses before suggesting
> libcli.  Eg, there's the old Columbia-MM reimplementation of the
> TOPS-20 COMND% JSYS (conceptual ancestor of the cisco CLI by way of
> the Stanford Ethertip), but the code is old and crufty.
> 
> I think LGPL, while not great, is acceptable, in that it only requires
> users to give away source to libcli itself.  In particular, it does
> NOT GPL-contaminate everything to which it's linked.
> 
> I think that, if we want a usable command line interface soon, libcli
> is probably the way to go.  We do have a few other things that we need
> to get done before Berlin.

Yes, the only alternative I've found in the short term would be to use 
something much, much simpler like this (code in public domain):

  https://github.com/ysbeer/cli

I fully agree with your point about not spending time on the wrong thing 
before Berlin. So which is the lesser evil? Less fancy CLI, or LGPL?

(unless someone else comes up with another alternative of course)

What I've seen done before in embedded CLIs is basically just an input routine 
and then a big case statement. Not pretty, but functional.

/Fredrik
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