Commandline: Where is HelpOptionAttribute?

[ohadschn]

I saw some samples that look like this:

[HelpOption]
public string GetUsage()
{
  var help = new HelpText {
    Heading = new HeadingInfo("<<app title>>", "<<app version>>"),
    Copyright = new CopyrightInfo("<<app author>>", 2014),
    AdditionalNewLineAfterOption = true,
    AddDashesToOption = true
  };
  help.AddPreOptionsLine("<<license details here.>>");
  help.AddPreOptionsLine("Usage: app -p Someone");
  help.AddOptions(this);
  return help;
}

However it doesn't seem like HelpOptionAttribute exists in the latest release (2.1.1-beta). What do I use instead?

[GuyTe]

Was struggling with this too and the workaround that worked for me was:

        var parser = new Parser(); 
        var parserResult = parser.ParseArguments<MyOptions>(args);
        parserResult.WithParsed<MyOptions>(options => DoSomething(options));
        parserResult.WithNotParsed(errs =>
            {
                var helpText = HelpText.AutoBuild(parserResult, h =>
                {
                    // Configure HelpText here  or create your own and return it 
                    h.AdditionalNewLineAfterOption = false;
                    return HelpText.DefaultParsingErrorsHandler(parserResult, h);
                }, e =>
                {
                    return e;
                });
                Console.Error.Write(helpText);
            }
            );

[dev-thinks]

Hmmm...downgrading to old version. Thanks.

[ericnewton76]

Just curious, what are you seeing for help text, versus what you want to see?

[theOrillian]

Is it possible to derive the usage text without being in the middle of a parse operation? All I want is a method Options.GetUsage() that spits out the usage info as it would as if --help was one of the arguments.

[nemec]

Not currently (without reflection at least), the help system is very tightly integrated with the parser result object.

[inzi]

Just my two cents - when I have logic around switches - if this is set then that, or if this is not set then require that - it would be very helpful to be able to dump out the help text after parsing.

I've not found a way to make conditional parsing logic with this version, and the inability to at least do something like options.AutoBuild(options) would be handy.

[hrobertson]

I was just updating a legacy app from CommandLineParser 1.9.71 under which this was possible.
I appreciate the library has been overhauled but getting the usage seems like a reasonable requirement.

Not a nice workaround:
c# public static string GetUsage() { var result = Parser.Default.ParseArguments<Options>(new string[] { "--help" }); return HelpText.RenderUsageText(result); }

[moh-hassan]

@hrobertson
You need not to re-use your code (GetUsage) of v1.x to build help.

Help in v2.0 is re-engineered and it's auto generated with zero code configuration.
Also, you can configure help to have more control:
Have a look to HelpText-Configuration and usage-attribute

[hrobertson]

@moh-hassan I'm fully aware of the changes and that help is auto-generated. My comment was in response to this earlier comment by @theOrillian (echoed by @inzi) :

Is it possible to derive the usage text without being in the middle of a parse operation? All I want is a method Options.GetUsage() that spits out the usage info as it would as if --help was one of the arguments.

[moh-hassan]

OK, so the new help system v2.x is a nice workaround of v1.x :)