Question

This is my Ruby code:

require 'thor'
require 'thor/group'

module CLI

    class Greet < Thor
        desc 'hi', 'Say hi!'
        method_option :name, :type => :string, :description => 'Name to greet', :default => 'there'
        def hi
            puts "Hi, #{options[:name]}!"
        end

        desc 'bye', 'say bye!'
        def bye
            puts "Bye!"
        end
    end


    class Root < Thor
        register CLI::Greet, 'greet', 'greet [COMMAND]', 'Greet with a command'
    end
end


CLI::Root.start

This is the output:

C:\temp>ruby greet.rb help greet
Usage:
  greet.rb greet [COMMAND]

Greet with a command

How do I get that to look something like this?

C:\temp>ruby greet.rb help greet
Usage:
  greet.rb greet [COMMAND]
    --name Name to greet

Greet with a command

Answer 1

You’ve got two things going on here. First, you’ve assigned –name to a method, not to the entire CLI::Greet class. So if you use the command:

ruby greet.rb greet help hi

you get

Usage:
  greet.rb hi

Options:
  [--name=NAME]  
                 # Default: there

Say hi!

Which, yes, is wrong– it doesn’t have the subcommand in the help. There’s a bug filed for this in Thor. It, however, is showing the method option properly.

What it seems like you’re looking for, however, is a class method. This is a method defined for the entire CLI::Greet class, not just for the #hi method.

You’d do this as such:

require 'thor'
require 'thor/group'

module CLI

    class Greet < Thor
        desc 'hi', 'Say hi!'
        class_option :number, :type => :string, :description => 'Number to call', :default => '555-1212'
        method_option :name, :type => :string, :description => 'Name to greet', :default => 'there'
        def hi
            puts "Hi, #{options[:name]}! Call me at #{options[:number]}"
        end

        desc 'bye', 'say bye!'
        def bye
            puts "Bye! Call me at #{options[:number]}"
        end
    end

    class Root < Thor
        register CLI::Greet, 'greet', 'greet [COMMAND]', 'Greet with a command'        
        tasks["greet"].options = CLI::Greet.class_options
    end
end

CLI::Root.start

With this, ruby greet.rb help greet returns

Usage:
  greet.rb greet [COMMAND]

Options:
  [--number=NUMBER]  
                     # Default: 555-1212

Greet with a command

Note there is still a hack needed here: the tasks["greet"].options = CLI::Greet.class_options line in CLI::Root. There’s a bug filed for this in Thor, too.