Passing --help should always yield help

[jcf]

Presently, when a CLI spec includes any validation, one must provide required options before help output is returned. Perhaps I'm missing something, but the docs appear to suggest this is the current behaviour, too.

$ my-cli --help
Missing required argument:
  -U, --username

In my opinion, this is a poor experience for anyone wanting to know how a CLI works. Instead, they should see the full help output.

$ my-cli --help
Usage: my-cli

  -h, --host
  -p, --port     5432
  -U, --username

(fn cli-error
  [{:keys [spec type cause msg option] :as data}]
  (if (= :org.babashka/cli type)
    (case cause
      :require
      (println (str "Missing required argument:\n"
                    (cli/format-opts {:spec (select-keys spec #{option})})))
      :validate
      (println (format "%s does not exist!\n" msg))
      ;; else
      (println msg))
    (throw (ex-info msg data)))
  (System/exit 1))

(cli/parse-args *command-line-args* cli-spec)

[borkdude]

@jcf It is very common indeed, but perhaps there's other flags like --version etc that may also require special treatment, and perhaps specific CLIs have more specific needs.

You can check for these special flags like so:

user=> (try (cli/parse-args ["--help"] {:require [:dude]}) (catch Exception e (:help (:opts (ex-data e)))))
true