DumbCLI

A small journey to my start of DumbCLI

Hi Everyone, I was disappointed of my windows 10 eating ram like a hungry duck. So I switched to Vanilla Arch Linux. When I was starting linux, I had some problems especially the terminal.

The terminal is a huge headache for a windows user. In order to tweak my OS to support my system and some visual enhancement. I was reading Arch Wiki and saw a huge line of commands. I was worried and tensed by seeing those commands. But to be honest its kinda cool.

Somehow I catch up with the linux commands and learned about linux a lot. But I was not a freaking worm to remember all commands. When I want to tweak some settings I open the terminal and look up the terminal for a few seconds to remember the commands. But its not possible for me to remember it.

So, I thought for a second, ‘Why can’t I build a CLI tool to help me to remember the commands???’

Then I prepare to make a CLI tool to help me and planned some of the architectures.

• I know JavaScript, so I thought to create in NodeJS.
• I found out yargs and inquirer JavaScript library to capture the commands from the users terminal.
• Chalk JS library will help us to give colors for the commands. Kinda cool.
• Planned to use SQL Lite database for the project, but in order to test my commands. I choose to store it in a json file.
• Used CLI Table to arrange and list all the commands.

Hmmm…! I only gave some of the libraries, not explained how the working of my project.

Here: Before explaining the working of project, let me explain what I need actually. I need the tool to remember my commands, so when i type short alias for the commands it need to execute in the terminal. And It need to list all the commands like list command bash.

Sounds simple first, but when I started to do a prototype using chatgpt. My head filled up with large scale project.

Here is the working of my project. When I type add command it need to add the command and store it in the JSON file. And the command will generate a unique number key for the specific command. And when I type and execute run <id> command it will run the command in the terminal. In order to list the command, list command will show all the stored commands.

Huhh!! Finally its looking cool. But I need the name for the CLI tool. I was thinking a unique name and I remembered, I was developed this is because I lack remembering commands, so I am a dumb person.So I thought, why don’t you just name it DUMB?? Hmmm,, Let’s call it DumbCLI then.

I need to add some more featuress…

hmm???? What if the stored list gets so long and how the user knows the command is in the list??

• Let’s add the command finding helper for DumbCLI.
• After that, I’ve added export and import helper for importing and exporting command list to other systems.
• Added alias for commands to run without unique key.
• Added short key for d instead dumb command to make it ease of use.
• implemented dynamic inputting in saved commands before command execution.
• implemented safety features…

Now the current CLI tool have these functionalities. But remember all this I’ve done with the help of ChatGPT. This is just a prototype.

This is how I developed DumbCLI .

Next, I want to make it more powerful, so you can do even more with your commands… stay tuned!

Thank you guys for reading this..