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usage 5.0.0 download

A specification for CLIs

This is an older version. The current version is 7.0.1. usage 7.0.1 · Released:

Installer files 5.0.0

ArchitectureTypeScopeFile sizeDownloadSHA256
64-bit ZIP → Portable — — github.com VirusTotal
ARM64 ZIP → Portable — — github.com VirusTotal

Link and SHA256 come from the Windows Package Manager community manifest. Compare the hash of the downloaded file before running it.

Release notes

A parser-level fix that makes double_dash="required" actually behave as declared drives the major bump: values before -- are now rejected, and values after -- are routed past greedy variadics to the arg that was waiting for them. The release also fixes a cluster of long-standing Windows problems — usage bash losing every usage_* variable under WSL, run= scripts being handed to cmd /c, and completion guards being fooled by a shell function named usage — and lets generate markdown write to stdout like the other generators.
Added
- Override the shell binary with USAGE_SHELL_<SHELL> (#767 by @JamBalaya56562). Point usage bash, usage zsh, usage fish, and usage powershell at a specific interpreter — mainly so Windows users can escape the WSL bash.exe that Win32's search order picks up ahead of $PATH:
set USAGE_SHELL_BASH=C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin\bash.exe
usage bash C:/work/mycli
The variable is keyed by the program (so powershell's override is USAGE_SHELL_PWSH). Unset, empty, or whitespace-only falls back to the default. Spawn failures now name the program that was tried and the variable it came from, and on Windows a bash exit 127 against a drive-letter path prints a hint pointing at this override.
- generate markdown writes to stdout (#766 by @JamBalaya56562). --out-file is now optional and defaults to stdout, matching manpage, fig, json, and completion. --out-file - also means stdout on markdown, manpage, and fig, mirroring the -f - input convention. The writing to … progress line moved to stderr on markdown, manpage, fig, and sdk, so it no longer ends up inside the generated document. --out-dir now requires --multi.

Fixed
- double_dash="required" is now enforced on both sides (#762 by @JamBalaya56562). The parser previously ignored SpecDoubleDashChoices::Required entirely — a word offered to such an arg without -- was accepted anyway, and a required arg sitting behind a greedy variadic was unreachable even with a separator. Now offering a value before -- is reported as ArgRequiresDoubleDash (once per variadic, not once per word), and an explicit -- routes the positional cursor onto the arg that required it, past earlier args. Completion learns about -- too: while an arg is locked behind a separator, -- itself is offered rather than values the parser would reject.
- Windows: usage_* variables reach WSL bash (#764 by @JamBalaya56562). On Windows the bash picked up from the system directory is WSL's launcher, and WSL only forwards a Win32 variable when WSLENV names it — so scripts saw every usage_* value unset. Both shell and exec now append the parsed argument names to WSLENV (bare, no /p or /l flags), preserving any entries the user had already configured.
- Windows: run= scripts use sh when available (#765 by @JamBalaya56562). complete run= already used sh -c everywhere, but mount run= used cmd /c on Windows, so the same POSIX one-liner behaved differently depending on which KDL node it lived in — and shebang scripts silently exited 0 with empty output. Both call sites now share one implementation: sh -c first, falling back to cmd /c only if sh is not found. Non-UTF-8 output from either shell is now reported as an error instead of panicking.
- Bash/fish completion guard ignores shell functions (#760 by @JamBalaya56562). The generated completion opens with a guard that bails out when the usage CLI is not installed, but type -p returns exit 0 for a shell function, so any environment defining a usage function (e.g. oh-my-bash) passed the guard and then failed further down with an unrelated error. Switched to type -P in both bash guards and the fish equivalent; zsh's type -p already forces a $PATH search and is unchanged.

Breaking Changes
- double_dash="required" positional args now reject values before -- (#762). Specs where such an arg previously happened to work without a separator will now error. In examples/mise.usage.kdl, post--- values also move from the preceding greedy variadic to the arg that declared the separator (e.g. from TASK_ARGS to TASK_ARGS_LAST, from TOOL@VERSION to COMMAND under exec), which changes which usage_* variable a consumer reads. Spec authors who want the old permissiveness can drop back to double_dash="optional" (the default).
- UsageErr and ParseOutput gained fields. UsageErr has a new ArgRequiresDoubleDash variant, and ParseOutput gained next_arg and double_dash_seen. Library consumers matching these types exhaustively will need to update.

💚 Sponsor usage
usage is maintained by @jdx, an open source developer for entire.io, the title sponsor of the jdx.dev open source tools including mise, aube, hk, and more. Work on usage is funded by sponsorships.
If usage powers CLI specs, docs, or completions for a tool you maintain or use, please consider sponsoring at jdx.dev. Every sponsorship helps the project stay independent and moving.

https://github.com/jdx/usage/releases/tag/v5.0.0

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