Installation

cff is a library and a CLI. You can install these independently with go get/go install (see Manual setup) but we recommend using the following instructions to set up your project to use it.

Recommended setup

One-time setup

Prerequisites

• Go 1.18 or newer
• a project with a go.mod file

Most Go projects should take the following steps to set up cff.

1. Inside the project directory, create a 'tools.go' if one doesn't already exist. This is where you'll specify development-time dependencies.

   cat > tools.go <<EOF
   //go:build tools
   
   package tools // use your project's package name here
   EOF
   

   Make sure you use the same package name as your project directory.

2. Add import _ "go.uber.org/cff/cmd/cff" to the tools.go.

   echo 'import _ "go.uber.org/cff/cmd/cff"' >> tools.go
   

3. Run go mod tidy to pick up the latest version of cff, or run go get go.uber.org/cff@main to get the current unreleased branch.

   go mod tidy
   

4. Install the cff CLI to a bin/ subdirectory of the project.

   GOBIN=$(pwd)/bin go install go.uber.org/cff/cmd/cff
   

   Feel free to gitignore this directory.

   echo '/bin' >> .gitignore
   

5. Add the following go:generate directive to an existing Go file in the same directory.

   //go:generate bin/cff ./...
   

Setup on new machines

Once a project is already using cff, new machines that work on the project simply need to install the cff CLI into the bin/ directory.

GOBIN=$(pwd)/bin go install go.uber.org/cff/cmd/cff

We recommend incorporating this into your project setup instructions or scripts.

Manual setup

Alternatively, you can install the cff CLI and library independently:

1. Add the library as a dependency of the project.

   go get go.uber.org/cff
   

2. Install the CLI globally.

   go install go.uber.org/cff/cmd/cff