Using with Deno

[shadowspawn]

I was looking at what might be needed to get Commander working in Deno. I discovered Commander is usable through the CDN https://esm.sh without code changes, including the TypeScript typing. Very clever!

// cli.ts
import { Command } from "https://esm.sh/commander";
const program = new Command();
program.parse();

$ deno run --allow-read --allow-env cli.ts --help
Usage: cli [options]

Options:
  -h, --help  display help for command

I found two limitations:

• the terminal width is unknown unless specify --unstable, so help wraps at column 80 by default
• stand-alone executable subcommands do not work

(The terminal width presumably requires consoleSize: https://deno.land/[email protected]?unstable=&s=Deno.consoleSize )
Update: terminal width working in Deno v1.28.0.

[shadowspawn]

Also working with the unstable npm support. Support for TypeScript typing from Deno v1.27.0.

// cli.ts
import { Command } from "npm:commander";
const program = new Command();
program.parse();

$ deno --unstable run --allow-read cli.ts --help
Usage: cli [options]

Options:
  -h, --help  display help for command

Deno roadmap for npm specifiers: denoland/deno#15960

[shadowspawn]

With Deno v1.28.0:

• no longer need --unstable
• TypeScript typing from import working
• help wraps at terminal width

[shadowspawn]

I did some more testing and didn't find any problems with Deno v1.28.0. Nice work by them!

I was wondering about adding an example import to the README in the program section, but nobody has asked about Deno, and many (most) npm modules are now available using the npm:foo import. So perhaps just expected behaviour now for Deno users!