Consider changing `cmd/` directory as cobra command recommendation

[Eric Greer]

Hello @spf13 and thank you for your many great contributions. I contributed to Hugo some time ago and use it for several sites!

The typical go pattern is to use the cmd directory like an index of all buildable binaries in a project. Cobra directly conflicts with this by recommending that the cmd directory is used to hold small packages which each contain cobra command packages.

Please consider recommending a more compatible file structure, such as this one that nests cobra commands with their relevant binaries:

project/
    Dockerfile
    kubernetes.yaml
    README.md
    cmd/
        binaryNameA/
            main.go
            cobraCommandA/
                cobraCommandA.go
            cobraCommandB/
                cobraCommandB.go
        binaryNameB/
            main.go
            otherStuff.go
    pkg/
        packageName/
            packageName.go

Or perhaps this layout, which organizes the cobra command packages as packages:

project/
    Dockerfile
    kubernetes.yaml
    README.md
    cmd/
        binaryNameA/
            main.go
        binaryNameB/
            main.go
            otherStuff.go
    pkg/
        packageName/
            packageName.go
        cobraCommandA/
            cobraCommandA.go
        cobraCommandB/
            cobraCommandB.go

The goal here is to enable the typical cmd/ directory behavior - rather than trying to make cobra users decide which layout to use.

Thanks again!

[Eric Greer]

I ended up making my own flags package to solve this problem: https://github.com/integrii/flaggy

[Alex Buchanan]

As I understand it, cobra doesn't require anything in particular, so this is a simple documentation change to the README. Is that right?

Or is this also related to the code generator.

For example, we use cobra with package directories per-subcommand here: https://github.com/ohsu-comp-bio/funnel/tree/master/cmd

[Eric Greer]

I suppose you could always go against the recommended directory layout. My proposal was to change the recommended patterns.

I think its safe to close this for now :-)

[Peter Bourgon]

I don't want to necromancy the issue or whatever, but the recommended layout generates a fair bit of confusion for new Gophers, as the pretty clear idiom in the rest of the ecosystem is to keep cmd/ free of actual .go files, just a kind of directory namespace for other subdirs that hold whatever binaries are in the project.

A few other things in the codegen utility also seem to go against the grain: creating package names with_underscores, and naming files as camelCase.go instead of snake_case.go.