this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
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What's your favorite well-designed CLI and why? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by netvor@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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Regardless of what the app does and whether the thing that does is particularly useful, powerful or important for what you need to do (or even well implemented), what is a command-line interface that you had a particularly good experience both learning and working with?

In other words, I'm thinking about command line interface design patterns that tend to correlate with good user experience.

"Good user experience" being vague, what I mean is, including (but not limited to)

  • discoverability--learning what features are available),
  • usability--those features actually being useful,
  • and expressiveness--being able to do more with less words without losing clarity,

but if there's a CLI that has none of those but you still like it, I'd be happy to hear about it.

Edit: Trying to stress more that this post is not about the functionality behind the tool. Looks like most of first responders missed the nuance: whether app x is better than app y because it does x1 ad x2 differently or better does not matter; I'm purely interested in how the command line interface is designed (short/long flags, sub-commands, verbs, nouns, output behaviors)..

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[–] richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one -1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Probably. Other people disagree.

[–] Obin@feddit.org 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

That article doesn't actually criticize the structure of git's CLI, just the way the application operates and the philosophy behind it. fossil's CLI actually seems to take a lot of inspiration from git, except it's way less complex, because fossil doesn't "need" that complexity (i.e. can't do it).

From a cursory reading, I disagree with most philosophical points made. Many of the scenarios and user testimony are complete nothing-burgers. I haven't tried it for any length of time, but I think I prefer a fast, optimized, flexible tool over an integrated everything-but-the-kitchen-sink opinionated kind of thing that forces you into doing things their way or the highway, no matter how good it actually is. But as OP said, this is about the CLI, not the applications.

[–] richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one -2 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Given your comments, you clearly don't know or understand the tool, but I won't elaborate further.

[–] Obin@feddit.org 3 points 21 hours ago

It smelled like an easily recognizable mentality, and your last comment just confirms that for me. I've seen it elsewhere and I try to stay away from it where I can. But I wish you luck and joy using your chosen set of tools though. It's great there are alternatives for everything in FOSS.