NAME: Cement

CREATOR/MAINTAINER: BJ Dierkes <wdierkes@5dollarwhitebox.org>

DESCRIPTION:

Cement is an advanced CLI Application Framework for Python. It promotes code 
re-use by way of plugins and helper libraries that can be shared between 
any application built on Cement.  The MVC and overall framework design is 
very much inspired by the TurboGears2 web framework.  Its goal is to introduce
a standard, and feature-full platform for both simple and complex command line 
applications as well as support rapid development needs without sacrificing
quality.

At a minimum, Cement configures the following features for every application:

    Multiple Configuration file parsing (default: /etc, ~/)
    Command line argument and option parsing
    Dual Console/File Logging Support
    Full Internal and External (3rd Party) Plugin support
    Basic "hook" support
    Full MVC support for advanced application design
    Text output rendering with Genshi templates
    Json output rendering allows other programs to access your CLI-API
    

The above provides any level developer with a solid, and fully functional 
cli application from the very start with more or less a single command via 
the paster utility.  Cement brings an end to the 'hack it out, and [maybe] 
clean it up later' routine that we all find ourselves in under deadlines.

Any application can utilize existing plugins from the CementPlugins
project, or from other 3rd party resources to extend functionality.  The 
plugin system is designed to allow portability of re-usable code, and it
is encouraged to contribute any plugins back to the project to extend the 
functionality of Cement.

The Cement CLI Application Framework is Open Source and is distributed under 
the Python Software Foundation License.  When creating plugins specifically 
for re-use within the community, please be sure to follow the standard naming 
convention "HelloWorld Plugin for Cement" as an example.  The actual module 
name should be 'cement.plugins.helloworld'. 


GETTING STARTED:

Stable versions of Cement can be installed via the cheeze shop:

    $ easy_install Cement
    
    $ easy_install CementPlugins


Development versions of Cement can be checked out of Git:

    $ git clone git://github.com/derks/cement.git
    
    $ cd cement
    
    $ python setup.py install
    
    
Additionally, Cement applications, plugins, and helpers can be created via 
PasteScript. Once Cement is installed, the following command will create a 
command line application built on top of the Cement Framework:

    $ paster cement-app <myapp>


The following command will create an external plugin for your application:

    $ paster cement-plugin <myapp> <myplugin>


Have a helper library you want to make pluggable?

    $ paster cement-helper <myapp> <myhelper>