Command runners

Often times you have a project where you quickly want to do something. This can be running tests, building a container image, generating documentation or something else.

One option is to use scripting to execute these tasks, another option is to use a ‘command runner’.

Make

Make uses a Makefile file. It is traditionally used as a build tool, but one of the features is to run commands.

Just

Just uses a justfilewhere you define ‘recipes’. These recipes are the commands or sets of commands that you want to run together. The syntax is inspired by make, but much of its complexity is removed.

Usage

Info

There is a handy VSCode extensionthat can be used for syntax-highlighting.

Download the precompiled binary via the releases page or install it via your favorite package manager.

$ dnf install just

Create a justfile in the root of your project.

# justfile
run-container:
  podman run -ti --rm ubuntu:latest /bin/bash

Run the justfile using the just command and by passing the recipe as argument.

$ just run-container
podman run -ti --rm ubuntu:latest /bin/bash
root@f15adf97df0e:/# 

Task

Task uses a Taskfile.yml file in the root of your project.