Concepts

Cobra is built on a structure of commands, arguments & flags.

Commands represent actions, Args are things and Flags are modifiers for those actions.

The best applications will read like sentences when used. Users will know how
to use the application because they will natively understand how to use it.

The pattern to follow is
APPNAME VERB NOUN --ADJECTIVE.
or
APPNAME COMMAND ARG --FLAG

A few good real world examples may better illustrate this point.

In the following example, ‘server’ is a command, and ‘port’ is a flag:

hugo server --port=1313

In this command we are telling Git to clone the url bare.

git clone URL --bare

Commands

Command is the central point of the application. Each interaction that
the application supports will be contained in a Command. A command can
have children commands and optionally run an action.

In the example above, ‘server’ is the command.

More about cobra.Command

Flags

A flag is a way to modify the behavior of a command. Cobra supports
fully POSIX-compliant flags as well as the Go flag package.
A Cobra command can define flags that persist through to children commands
and flags that are only available to that command.

In the example above, ‘port’ is the flag.

Flag functionality is provided by the pflag
library, a fork of the flag standard library
which maintains the same interface while adding POSIX compliance.