Scala.js and Scala Native

As of version 0.3.0, decline is available for Scala.js!

Everything that works on the JVM should work in JavaScript as well, including everything in the main guide. (If you find something that doesn’t, please open an issue!) This document has a few more details on the nuts and bolts of getting a command-line application up and running.

Working with CommandApp

If you’re using a command-line parsing library like decline, you’re probably writing a command-line application… and these work quite differently on the JVM and in JavaScript. In particular, JavaScript environments have no concept of a “main method” – runtimes like Node.js provide their own interfaces for accessing command-line arguments for applications that need them.

decline’s CommandApp abstracts over these differences. If you define an application using that style…

import com.monovore.decline._

object MyApp extends CommandApp(
  name = "my-app",
  header = "This compiles to JavaScript!",
  main = {
    val loudOpt = Opts.flag("loud", "Do something noisy!").orFalse
    
    for (loud <- loudOpt) yield {
      if (loud) println("HELLO WORLD!")
      else println("hello world!")
    }
  }
)

…and compile it to JS, you should be able to kick it off with:

$ node my-compiled-app.js --loud
HELLO WORLD!

This makes it possible to write a single command-line application and compile it for both Node and the JVM!

If you haven’t written a CLI app with Scala.js before, some things to remember:

• Make sure you configure Scala.js to compile your code as an application.
• The standard SBT run command won’t forward the arguments along; you’ll need to build the JavaScript file and then invoke it manually with node.

Ambient Arguments

If you’d rather not use CommandApp to set up a main method for you, it’s still possible to use decline as a library. However, it gets a little tricky to get ahold of the command-line arguments – when Scala.js calls your main method with an Array[String], the array is always empty!

As a workaround, decline wraps Node.js’ process.argv interface for platforms where that is available:

import com.monovore.decline.PlatformApp

PlatformApp.ambientArgs match {
  case None => // No arguments available! (JVM / Browser)
  case Some(args) => // Found 'em! (Node.js)
}

Of course, this means your code has to handle running under the JVM or Node.js differently, which makes things more complicated than the CommandApp style above.

Scala Native

decline also publishes artifacts for Scala Native.

Older versions of Scala Native have a bug that prevents CommandApp and CommandIOApp from working correctly. Make sure you’re using Scala Native 0.4.4 or later!