Did the cel-eval command vanish? Has it moved to another repository?

[kastl-ars]

Dear all,

I got a recommendation for the cel-eval tool to evaluate CEL expressions offline. However the (few) mentions I found only contained a command that seems to no longer work:

$ go install github.com/cel-expr/cel-go/cmd/cel@latest
go: downloading github.com/cel-expr/cel-go v0.29.2
go: github.com/cel-expr/cel-go/cmd/cel@latest: module github.com/cel-expr/cel-go@latest found (v0.29.2), but does not contain package github.com/cel-expr/cel-go/cmd/cel
$ go install github.com/google/cel-go/cmd/cel@latest                                                                                                                                                                                          
go: downloading github.com/google/cel-go v0.29.2
go: github.com/google/cel-go/cmd/cel@latest: module github.com/google/cel-go@latest found (v0.29.2), but does not contain package github.com/google/cel-go/cmd/cel
$

I found no trace of cel-eval in the repository and a quick search through the other repos did also not turn up anything useful (to me, as an unexperienced CEL and golang user).

Was this command dropped? Was it replaced? Moved? Or did I just find outdated commands?

Thanks in advance!

Kind Regards,
Johannes

[darekwojciechowski]

Those commands were just wrong — cel-eval doesn't exist in this repo and never did, and there's no cmd/ directory at all. Whoever recommended it had the name mixed up.

What you actually want is the CEL REPL, which lives in repl/.

Two things tripped you up:

1. The Go module path is still github.com/google/cel-go, even though the repo moved to the cel-expr org. Check go.mod — renames don't change module paths.
2. repl/ is its own nested module, and the binary is in repl/main. It isn't reachable from the root module, which is exactly why Go said "module found, but does not contain package".

Easiest way to build it:

git clone https://github.com/cel-expr/cel-go
cd cel-go/repl/main
go build -o ~/.local/bin/cel-repl .

go install github.com/google/cel-go/repl/main@latest also works, but it drops a binary literally called main in your $GOBIN, since Go names it after the directory. Building with -o avoids that.

Then:

$ cel-repl
cel-repl> %let x = 10
cel-repl> %let y = {'abc': {'def': [1, 2, 3]}}
cel-repl> y.abc.def.filter(el, el < x)
[1, 2, 3] : list<int>

%let binds a value, %declare x : int declares a type only, %delete removes one, %exit quits. More in repl/main/README.md.

If you just want to try one expression, cd repl/main && go run . from a clone is enough.