How to create a drush command without drupal? I'm attempting to create a drush command for use outside of a Drupal install.  It's basically a script to make a copy of a distribution starter kit and do some string replacing.  I'm following the sandwich example.

I'm running into two issues...

1) I created mycommandfile.drush.inc in a new folder.  If I try to run the command it says the drush command cannot be found. So I copied the file to my /.drush folder and it finds the command.  Any idea why that would be the case?

2) The second issue is that with the file in the /.drush folder it is telling me that I need a higher bootstrap level to run - you will need to invoke drush from a more functional Drupal environment to run this command.  In my command declaration I have 'bootstrap' => DRUSH_BOOTSTRAP_DRUSH.
1) Drush only searches certain folders for Drush commandfiles.  Run with --include=/path/to/your/drushcommands, or set $options['include'][] = '/path/to/your/drushcommands'; in your drushrc.php if you'd like to use a directory other than $HOME/.drush.

2) If you have in fact set your bootstrap to DRUSH_BOOTSTRAP_DRUSH, then you should not be getting that message.  Maybe there is something wrong with your commandfile definition; can't guess what it might be from the information provided, though.

For a quick start on writing a new Drush command, see the drushify project.  It will create a template for you very quickly.  Perhaps you could compare the template drushify creates with the commandfile you put together.