# tj/commander

The complete solution for Ruby command-line executables

Repository: https://github.com/tj/commander
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/tj-commander
Homepage: http://visionmedia.github.com/commander
Language: Ruby
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2015-04-01T05:52:37+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 32/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 6530, "days_push": 4172, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1085, forks 61 (observed 2026-08-28T04:03:31.937553+00:00)

## What it is
Commander is a Ruby library for building command-line executables, providing command definition, option parsing, and help generation. The repository has moved to commander-rb/commander and the original tj/commander repo is no longer maintained.

## Use cases
- build a cli tool in ruby
- parse command line arguments in ruby
- create subcommands for a ruby executable
- generate help text for a ruby cli
- write a multi-command ruby program

## When to choose
- you are already using commander in an existing Ruby project
- you want a batteries-included CLI framework with subcommands and help generation in Ruby

## When to avoid
- starting a new Ruby CLI project - prefer actively maintained alternatives like thor or dry-cli
- you need bug fixes or new features - the repo has moved and the original is unmaintained

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: abandoned
- function: cli, developer-tools
- domain: developer-tools
- platform: ruby, cli, cross-platform
- tags: cli-framework, argument-parsing, commander-rb, moved-repo, command-line

## Member repositories
- tj/commander (main) score 32

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:31.937553+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T06:49:53.630915+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/tj/commander (fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:31.937553+00:00, sha 1f9aa31243e1)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.