io7m | single-page | multi-page | epub | Cardant User Manual 0.0.2
6. Command-Line Interface
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# 6.1. Overview

1
The cardant package provides a command-line interface for performing tasks such as starting the server, checking configuration files, and etc. The base cardant command is broken into a number of subcommands which are documented over the following sections.

### 6.1.2. Command-Line Overview

    cardant: usage: cardant [command] [arguments ...]

      The cardant server command-line application.

      Use the "help" command to examine specific commands:

        $ cardant help help.

      Command-line arguments can be placed one per line into a file, and
      the file can be referenced using the @ symbol:

        $ echo help > file.txt
        $ echo help >> file.txt
        $ cardant @file.txt

      Commands:
        help          Show usage information for a command.
        initialize    Initialize the server and database.
        server        Start the server.
        shell         Start the shell.
        version       Show the application version.

      Documentation:
        https://www.io7m.com/software/cardant/

3
All subcommands accept a --verbose parameter that may be set to one of trace, debug, info, warn, or error. This parameter sets the lower bound for the severity of messages that will be logged. For example, at debug verbosity, only messages of severity debug and above will be logged. Setting the verbosity to trace level effectively causes everything to be logged, and will produce large volumes of debugging output.
4
The cardant command-line tool uses quarrel to parse command-line arguments, and therefore supports placing command-line arguments into a file, one argument per line, and then referencing that file with @. For example:

### 6.1.5. @ Syntax

    $ cardant server --configuration server.conf

    $ (cat <<EOF
    --configuration
    server.conf
    EOF
    ) > args.txt

    $ cardant @args.txt

6
All subcommands, unless otherwise specified, yield an exit code of 0 on success, and a non-zero exit code on failure.
6. Command-Line Interface
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6. Command-Line Interface
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6.2. initialize
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io7m | single-page | multi-page | epub | Cardant User Manual 0.0.2