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gui-cs/cli Constitution

Version: 1.1 | Ratified: 2026-05-23 | Last Amended: 2026-05-23

This constitution governs all contributions to gui-cs/cli. It is the highest-authority engineering document in this repository.

I. Purpose & Scope

Terminal.Gui.Cli is a .NET class library for exposing Terminal.Gui capabilities through scriptable CLI surfaces.

  • Package ID: Terminal.Gui.Cli
  • Namespace: Terminal.Gui.Cli
  • TFM: net10.0

II. Non-Goals

Until implementation begins, this repository remains scaffold-first and should not accrue speculative production features.

III. Architectural and Engineering Rules (C1-C8)

Every PR must comply with all rules below.

C1 — Only CliHost calls Terminal.Gui lifecycle APIs

Initialization and shutdown of Terminal.Gui runtime lifecycle APIs must be centralized in CliHost. No command, helper, or utility type may call lifecycle entrypoints directly.

C2 — Public API changes require spec updates

Any change to public API surface must include corresponding updates in specs/ in the same PR.

C3 — No reflection-based command discovery

Command discovery must be explicit and deterministic. Reflection scanning for command registration or dispatch is prohibited.

C4 — Source-generated JSON only

Runtime reflection-based JSON serialization is disallowed. JSON paths must use source-generated System.Text.Json contexts.

C5 — Tests run in parallel and must avoid process-global mutation

Test projects run in parallel by default. Tests must not mutate process-global state unless explicitly isolated with collection-level opt-outs.

C6 — Commands must never call Environment.Exit

Command implementations return exit codes/results through framework abstractions and must not terminate the process directly.

C7 — Schema v1 is append-only

For versioned machine-readable contracts, v1 schemas are append-only. Existing fields/semantics are not removed or redefined.

C8 — Zero warnings

Warnings are treated as errors. Builds and CI must remain warning-free.

IV. Public API Layout

Public API is documented in specs/library-spec.md. Two narrow file-layout exceptions are intentional: CommandResult and CommandResult<T> live together in CommandResult.cs, and ICliCommand<TValue> lives in ICliCommandGeneric.cs. Do not use angle brackets in filenames; the Generic suffix is the established convention for this single generic-interface companion file.

V. Testing Tiers

  • Terminal.Gui.Cli.Tests — unit tests
  • Terminal.Gui.Cli.IntegrationTests — integration tests
  • Terminal.Gui.Cli.SmokeTests — smoke-level validation

VI. Governance

Constitution changes require a pull request that updates this file and explains the rationale and migration impact.