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](https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/spf13/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](https://golang.org/pkg/flag/).
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](https://github.com/spf13/pflag), a fork of the flag standard library
which maintains the same interface while adding POSIX compliance.
# Installing
Using Cobra is easy. First, use `go get` to install the latest version
of the library.
```
go get -u github.com/spf13/cobra@latest
```
Next, include Cobra in your application:
```go
import "github.com/spf13/cobra"
```
# Usage
`cobra-cli` is a command line program to generate cobra applications and command files.
It will bootstrap your application scaffolding to rapidly
develop a Cobra-based application. It is the easiest way to incorporate Cobra into your application.
It can be installed by running:
```
go install github.com/spf13/cobra-cli@latest
```
For complete details on using the Cobra-CLI generator, please read [The Cobra Generator README](https://github.com/spf13/cobra-cli/blob/main/README.md)
For complete details on using the Cobra library, please read the [The Cobra User Guide](user_guide.md).
# License
Cobra is released under the Apache 2.0 license. See [LICENSE.txt](https://github.com/spf13/cobra/blob/master/LICENSE.txt)