VIvishnumohandas·Nov 7, 2020
For configuration management, I've found viper[1] to be quite handy.
[1]: https://github.com/spf13/viper
In Go in Production – Lessons Learnedspf13
viper
Go2017–2026
spf13 / viper
viper
Go configuration with fangs
18Distinct people
19Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
30.5KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Go configuration with fangs
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
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Also in these discussions
- spf13/cobra · linked in 3 of the same discussions
- spf13/pflag · 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 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 6:59:22 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 year19 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2017-09-07 20:00:36 UTC to 2026-07-16 15:44:45 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 | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 2 | 5 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
4 sourcesMy 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 OptionsFrom experience, it's good to support multiple ways of configuring an app. Depending on your case, this could become hard or requires naming conventions.
This way you can move secret data to files if needed depending on the deployment choice.
My own rule of thumb is:
1) sensible default value
2) read from file
3) read from env
Examples:
- https://github.com/spf13/viper
- https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/ht...
In Don't use ENV variables for secret data (2017)Since everyone else is throwing out recommendations I personally think https://github.com/spf13/cobra is the best CLI templating system, especially because of how well it pairs with https://github.com/spf13/viper.
Large projects like Hugo and Kubernetes have used Cobra to build their CLI tools, and it's fairly light as well even if you need simpler usage. We use it at my workplace simply for wrapping our microservices and the few commands (serve, migrate, etc)
In Diving into Go by building a CLI application