AlastairLundy.CliInvoke 2.0.0-beta.4

CliInvoke

CliInvoke is a .NET library for interacting with Command Line Interfaces and wrapping around executables.

Launch processes, redirect standard input and output streams, await process completion and so much more.

<img src="https://github.com/alastairlundy/CliInvoke/blob/main/.assets/icon.png" width="192" height="192" alt="CliInvoke Logo">

Table of Contents

• Features
• Why CliInvoke?
• Installing CliInvoke
  • Installing CliInvoke
  • Supported Platforms
• CliInvoke Examples
  • Running Programs/Commands
  • Safe Process Running
• Contributing to CliInvoke
• Roadmap
• License
  • CliRunner Assets
• Acknowledgements

Features

• Promotes the single responsibility principle and separation of concerns
• Supports .NET Standard 2.0, .NET 8 and newer TFMs, and has few dependencies.
• Dependency Injection extensions to make using CliInvoke a breeze.
• Support for specific specializations such as running executables or commands via Windows Powershell or CMD on Windows ¹
• SourceLink support

¹ - The Specialization library is distributed separately here.

Why use CliInvoke over CliWrap?

• Greater separation of concerns - Command Building, Command Running, and Command Pipe handling are moved to separate classes.
• Supports and was designed with Dependency Injection in mind
• Classes and code follow the Single Responsibility Principle
• No additional licensing terms are required beyond the source code license.
• No imported C code - This library is entirely written in C#.
• No lock in regarding Piping support
• Supports .NET's built in ProcessStartInfo primitive.

How to install and use CliInvoke

CliInvoke is available on Nuget.

These are the CliInvoke projects:

• CliInvoke - The main CliInvoke package.
• CliInvoke.Extensions
• CliInvoke.Specializations

Installing CliInvoke

CliInvoke's packages can be installed via the .NET SDK CLI, Nuget via your IDE or code editor's package interface, or via the Nuget website.

Supported Platforms

CliInvoke can currently be added to .NET 8, or .NET 9 or newer supported projects.

The following table details which target platforms are supported for executing commands via CliInvoke.

³ - See the Process class documentation for more info.

⁴ - Lack of watchOS support is implied by lack of IOS support since watchOS is based on IOS.

Note: This library has not been tested on Android or Tizen.

Using CliInvoke / Examples

The two main use cases for CliInvoke are intended to be:

1. executing Programs/Commands programatically which involves using abstractions to improve the experience of external Program/Command running.
2. safe Process Running which involves avoiding the pitfalls of the Process class whilst still dealing with ProcessStartInfo.

CliInvoke provides both options to give developers a choice in the approach they adopt. They are both equally safe and valid.

Approaches

Safe Process Running

CliInvoke offers safe abstractions around Process Running to avoid accidentally not disposing of Processes, along with avoiding other pitfalls.

Running Programs/Commands

Because of how much of a minefield the Process class is and how difficult it can be to configure correctly, CliInvoke provides some abstractions to make it easier to configure Programs/Commands to be run.

CliInvoke provides fluent builder interfaces and implementing classes to easily configure ProcessConfiguration. ProcessConfiguration is CliInvoke's main form of Process configuration (hence the name).

Approach Examples

IProcessConfigurationInvoker

The following examples shows how to configure and build a ProcessConfiguration depending on whether Buffering the output is desired.

Non-Buffered Execution Example

This example gets a non buffered ProcessResult that contains basic process exit code, id, and other information.

using AlastairLundy.CliInvoke;
using AlastairLundy.CliInvoke.Core;

using AlastairLundy.CliInvoke.Builders;
using AlastairLundy.CliInvoke.Core.Builders;

using AlastairLundy.CliInvoke.Core.Primitives;

  //Namespace and class code ommitted for clarity 

  // ServiceProvider and Dependency Injection setup code ommitted for clarity
  
  IProcessConfigurationInvoker _processConfigInvoker = serviceProvider.GetRequiredService<IProcessConfigurationInvoker>();

  // Fluently configure your Command.
  IProcessConfigurationBuilder builder = new ProcessConfigurationBuilder("Path/To/Executable")
                            .WithArguments(["arg1", "arg2"])
                            .WithWorkingDirectory("/Path/To/Directory");
  
  // Build it as a ProcessConfiguration object when you're ready to use it.
  ProcessConfiguration config = builder.Build();
  
  // Execute the process through ProcessInvoker and get the results.
ProcessResult result = await _processConfigInvoker.ExecuteAsync(config);

Buffered Execution Example

This example gets a BufferedProcessResult which contains redirected StandardOutput and StandardError as strings.

using AlastairLundy.CliInvoke;
using AlastairLundy.CliInvoke.Core;

using AlastairLundy.CliInvoke.Builders;
using AlastairLundy.CliInvoke.Core.Builders;

using AlastairLundy.CliInvoke.Core.Primitives;

  //Namespace and class code ommitted for clarity 

  // ServiceProvider and Dependency Injection setup code ommitted for clarity
  
  IProcessConfigurationInvoker _processConfigInvoker = serviceProvider.GetRequiredService<IProcessConfigurationInvoker>();

  // Fluently configure your Command.
  IProcessConfigurationBuilder builder = new ProcessConfigurationBuilder("Path/To/Executable")
                            .WithArguments(["arg1", "arg2"])
                            .WithWorkingDirectory("/Path/To/Directory");
  
  // Build it as a ProcessConfiguration object when you're ready to use it.
  ProcessConfiguration config = builder.Build();
  
  // Execute the process through ProcessInvoker and get the results.
BufferedProcessResult result = await _processConfigInvoker.ExecuteBufferedAsync(config);

How to Build CliInvoke's code

How to Contribute to CliInvoke

Thank you in advance for considering contributing to CliInvoke.

Please see the CONTRIBUTING.md file for code and localization contributions.

If you want to file a bug report or suggest a potential feature to add, please check out the GitHub issues page to see if a similar or identical issue is already open. If there is not already a relevant issue filed, please file one here and follow the respective guidance from the appropriate issue template.

Thanks.

CliInvoke's Roadmap

CliInvoke aims to make working with Commands and external processes easier.

Whilst an initial set of features are available in version 1, there is room for more features, and for modifications of existing features in future updates.

That being said, all stable releases from 1.0 onwards must be stable and should not contain regressions.

Future updates should aim focus on one or more of the following:

• Improved ease of use
• Improved stability
• New features
• Enhancing existing features

License

CliInvoke is licensed under the MPL 2.0 license. If you modify any of CliInvoke's files then the modified files must be licensed under the MPL 2.0 .

If you use CliInvoke in your project please make an exact copy of the contents of CliInvoke's LICENSE.txt file available either in your third party licenses txt file or as a separate txt file.

CliInvoke Assets

CliInvoke's Icon is NOT licensed under the MPL 2.0 license and is licensed under Copyright with all rights reserved to me (Alastair Lundy).

If you fork CliInvoke and re-distribute it, please replace the usage of the icon unless you have prior written agreements from me.

Acknowledgements

Projects

This project would like to thank the following projects for their work:

• CliWrap for inspiring this project
• Polyfill for simplifying .NET Standard 2.0 support

For more information, please see the THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES file.