SUsunaookami·Aug 11, 2026
Yeah same but I always allow https://github.com/spf13/pflag because e.g. Claude really struggles with the default flag package (and it's shit in general)
In Go is an ideal language for AI-assisted software engineeringspf13
pflag
Go2017–2026
spf13 / pflag
pflag
Drop-in replacement for Go's flag package, implementing POSIX/GNU-style --flags.
8Distinct people
9Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
2.8KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Drop-in replacement for Go's flag package, implementing POSIX/GNU-style --flags.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- spf13/cobra · linked in 3 of the same discussions
- go-chi/chi · linked in 2 of the same discussions
- spf13/viper · linked in 2 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 12:54:37 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year9 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2017-09-07 20:00:36 UTC to 2026-08-11 18:43:56 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
9 sources> I have yet to come across a go project that doesn't pull in tons of 3rd party code as well.
These have Zero dependencies. It's not rare in Go land.
- https://github.com/go-chi/chi 19k stars
- https://github.com/julienschmidt/httprouter 16k stars
- https://github.com/gorilla/mux 21k stars
- https://github.com/spf13/pflag 2.6k stars
- https://github.com/google/uuid 5.6k starts
Many others have just a few dependencies.
In Rust’s dependencies are starting to worry meCobra https://github.com/spf13/cobra uses https://github.com/spf13/pflag, which supports GNU style flags. Cobra has been developed for many years now and has a ton of additional features, like automatically generating the autocompletions and has tons of unit tests.
I'd just use cobra.
In argp: GNU-style command line argument parser for GoTry github.com/spf13/pflag, it handles double-dash arguments OK, and is drop-in.
In Unix command line conventions over timeThe first rule of writing Go CLI tools that don’t drive users insane is to use “github.com/spf13/pflag” instead of the “flag” standard library package.
Rather annoyingly that is often the only third party dependency required…
In -h –Help -help Help –? –?Looks cool, but nothing much happens for me. I used brew to install go, then ran the following:
% type -a go
/usr/local/bin/go
% cd tsukae
% go get -d ./...
go: downloading github.com/inconshreveable/mousetrap v1.0.0
% go run main.go
o: downloading github.com/spf13/cobra v1.1.3
go: downloading github.com/gizak/termui/v3 v3.1.0
go: downloading github.com/mattn/go-runewidth v0.0.2
go: downloading github.com/nsf/termbox-go v0.0.0-20190121233118-02980233997d
go: downloading github.com/mitchellh/go-wordwrap v0.0.0-20150314170334-ad45545899c7
go: downloading github.com/spf13/pflag v1.0.5
...a whole lot of usage information...
...but nothing useful (not a go person, so, YMMV)....
Any ideas?
FYI,
% go version
go version go1.16 darwin/amd64
In Show HN: Unix tool that visualizes shell commands usageMy impression is that nobody bothers with the Go flags package and most people use the POSIX compatible pflag [1] library for argument parsing, usually via the awsome cobra [2] cli framework.
Or they just use viper [3] for both command line and general configuration handling. No point reinventing the wheel or trying to remember some weird non-standard quirks.
[1] https://github.com/spf13/pflag
[2] https://github.com/spf13/cobra
[3] https://github.com/spf13/viper
In Conventions for Command Line OptionsFor gnu style long options you want: https://github.com/spf13/pflag
It is a drop in replacement for the built in flag library.
I ususally start out with the built in flag library and migrate to pflag when things get a bit more complicated.
In The Value in Go’s SimplicityThe Go standard library has most of what you need for basic API servers. However as has been stated here, some things are not worth spending time crafting yourself.
Also for modern Docker/Kubernetes ops environments you need some additional infrastructure for table stakes. Here's my standard Nulladmin.com stack:
Routing - https://github.com/go-chi/chi
Command flags - https://github.com/spf13/pflag
Config - https://github.com/spf13/viper
Logging - https://github.com/Sirupsen/logrus
Metrics - https://github.com/prometheus/client_golang/prometheus
SQL helper - https://github.com/jmoiron/sqlx
OpenTracing - https://github.com/opentracing/opentracing-go
In Ask HN: What Go framework for web API are you using in production?