Rationale, license

LICENSE

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+MIT License
+
+Copyright (c) 2024 Stephen Sherratt
+
+Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
+of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
+in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
+to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
+copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
+furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
+
+The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
+copies or substantial portions of the Software.
+
+THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
+IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
+FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
+AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
+LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
+OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
+SOFTWARE.

README.md

@@ -2,7 +2,24 @@
 
 [![test status](https://github.com/gridbugs/climate/actions/workflows/test.yml/badge.svg)](https://github.com/gridbugs/climate/actions/workflows/test.yml)
 
-A boring command-line parser for OCaml.
+A boring, declarative command-line parser for OCaml.
+
+## Rationale
+
+Programs written in OCaml should conform to existing UX conventions so as to
+match the expectations of users coming from other tools. For command-line
+programs which wish to parse their arguments in a declarative style, existing
+solutions all seem to deviate from the conventions established by common Unix
+tools. The two popular libraries for declarative command-line argument parsing
+in OCaml are`cmdliner` and `base`'s `Command` module. Both of these libraries
+present unconventional behaviour in that non-ambiguous prefixes of arguments are
+treated as the full argument names. Additionally, `cmdliner` lacks support for
+generating shell autocompletion scripts, and `base` only supports arguments
+beginning with a single `-`.
+
+This library aims to be an alternative to `cmdliner` and `Base.Command` with
+support for generating autocompletion scripts and which behaves as
+conventionally as possible.
 
 ## Manual