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// CLI MANUAL — 01 / 12

CLI User Guide

Everything about the imq command — from installation to writing your own templates and adapting the tool to real-world projects.

@imqueue/cli (the imq command) is a Rapid Application Development tool for the @imqueue framework — a Redis-backed RPC microservice toolkit for Node.js/TypeScript. It scaffolds services from templates, wires them to your VCS host, CI provider and container registry, generates strongly-typed RPC clients, and helps you run and maintain a whole fleet of services locally.

This manual covers everything from installation to writing your own templates and adapting the tool to real-world projects.

New in 4.x — the old standalone shell tools imqctl, imqlog and imqup are now native subcommands: imq ctl, imq log, imq up. Service creation is built on a four-axis provider model (VCS host, CI, registry, addon packages) that is fully backward compatible with 3.x configs. See Configuration and Providers.

The command surface at a glance

Command What it does
imq service create Scaffold a new service from a template; optionally create the remote repo, provision CI secrets, commit, push and tag.
imq service update-version Bump the version of one or many services on a branch and push, triggering CI.
imq client generate Generate a typed RPC client from a running service.
imq config init / get / set / check the CLI configuration.
imq completions Install/remove shell completions (bash & zsh).
imq ctl Start / stop / restart a bulk of local services.
imq log Tail and combine local service logs.
imq up Bulk-update service dependencies (and optionally version/commit/push).

Where to start

  1. Installation — install the CLI and shell completions.
  2. Configuration — run imq config init to set your defaults (VCS host, CI, registry, namespaces, tokens).
  3. Creating Services — scaffold your first service.
  4. Managing Local Services — run many services at once during development.

Design principles

  • Non-interactive by default when it can be. Every option resolves with a strict precedence (flag → per-service .imqrc.json → global config → interactive prompt → default), so CI and scripted runs never hang.
  • Backward compatible. A config written by 3.x keeps working; the new structured keys and the legacy keys are kept in sync.
  • Data-driven where possible. The addon package catalog and the templates live in a separate repo, so they can evolve without a CLI release.
  • Testable and portable. Every network endpoint has an environment-variable override, which also enables GitHub Enterprise, self-managed GitLab and Bitbucket Cloud-compatible endpoints.

Conventions in this manual

  • ~/.imq/ is the CLI home; override the base with IMQ_CLI_HOME.
  • Shell snippets assume a POSIX shell. Windows users should use WSL or Git Bash.
  • Angle brackets <like-this> mark required values; square brackets [like-this] mark optional ones.