nimforum mirror - Kicker: A macro-based CLI parser driven by proc signatures

BLeAmz (orginal) [2026-03-11T15:07:31+01:00] view original

I’ve been following the discussion and it’s cool to see how everyone handles CLI parsing(https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/13777). I thought I’d share a macro-based approach I use called Kicker. https://github.com/BLeAm/kicker.nim

It’s pretty straightforward, the macro inspects your proc and maps parameters into five modes: positional, optional, flags, rest args, and repeated options.

A few things I’ve found really useful:

Proc-Driven: It handles all the parsing logic based on your proc's signature.

Auto-Abbreviations: It automatically creates short flags (like -i) if you use uppercase letters in your parameter names.

Docstring Help: It pulls help messages directly from the docstring at the end of the proc.

Flexible Dispatching: It supports both a single command mode (using a main proc) and a sub-command mode where you can easily dispatch to different procs.

It’s been a 'less is more' solution for me, no need to manually build parser objects or configuration tables. You just write your logic and let the macro handle the mapping. Actually, I developed it for personal use but just thought I’d throw it out there as another way to leverage Nim’s macros for CLI tools!

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13779 :: Kicker: A macro-based CLI parser driven by proc signatures