grpcmd vs sabledocs

grpcmd is a free command-line tool for working with gRPC services on Linux, macOS, and Windows. It can use reflection to find available services and methods, describe a method’s request and response messages, and make calls. Requests and responses can stream, with headers, data, and trailers included in output. Users who do not want to rely on reflection can instead provide.proto files and import search paths. The tool can also start a gRPC server implementing grpcmd.GrpcmdService with reflection, and its documentation covers shell completion for Bash, Zsh, fish, and PowerShell. A related tool, grpcmd-script, lets users define endpoint tests in JavaScript and assert response headers, data messages, and trailers; it is distributed as a binary and does not require Node.js. The separate grpcmd-gui desktop app supports reflection-based method lookup, request headers, response headers and trailers, JSON request templates, streaming, and themes. GUI downloads are available for macOS, Windows, and Linux, including amd64 and arm64 builds. grpcmd is listed at free; grpcmd-script is listed at $9 a year with early-bird pricing.

Sabledocs is a free, open-source command-line generator for static HTML documentation of Protobuf and gRPC contracts. It can create one documentation site for multiple packages and combine material for Protobuf and gRPC. The input is a binary descriptor generated with protoc; comments require the descriptor to include source information. Search is enabled by default and can use a prebuilt Lunr index, while Markdown is supported in the main content page and Protobuf comments. Configuration in sabledocs.toml covers items such as titles, paths, package visibility, member ordering, and comment filtering. Jinja templates can be customized for primary content, and extra templates can be added to the output. Users can configure source links for Protobuf model members in GitHub, Bitbucket, Bitbucket Data Center, and GitLab repositories. The generator writes the site to sabledocs_output, where it can be opened through index.html. Sabledocs requires Python 3.11 or higher and is installed with pip install sabledocs. A Docker image includes both protoc and Sabledocs.