Show HN: Bud – Command Runner inspired by Make

https://github.com/dohsimpson/bud

by aliencat • 7 years ago

5 4 7 years ago

github.com

stephenr2• 7 years ago

The three arguments for not using Make are I believe, all false.

Can't pass arguments on the command line

`DESTDIR=foo make` or `make DESTDIR=foo` both work.. So yes you can.

Can't reference other make target

What is meant by 'reference' ? You can't call them? Of course you can? You can't use their output? Use a temporary file (i.e. the target name).

Make target cannot use the same name as a file

This is what .PHONY is for.

I'm all for building better tools, but I don't see how this is an improvement.

aliencat2• 7 years ago

Your statements are correct, but they are workarounds, and doesn't cover all the use cases. And they usually requires a StackOverflow search. For the above 2 reasons, I consider them to be limitations.

1. Problem is You have to explicit define a number of arguments and they have to be named. Consider the situation where you want to call an arbitary number of arguments, can't do that. (ref: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2214575/passing-argument...)

2. You cannot reference the target in the body of another target. (ref: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3267145/makefile-execute...) Consider below:

  .PHONY: a b
  a:
    echo A
  b:
    echo B
    a # can't do this
    echo B

3. .PHONY should be the default when you don't use file target, which is often the case for most non-C project.

With Bud, bash script become your Makefile and bash functions become your Make target. You can have arbitary numbers of arguments, you can reference other targets since they are just functions, and you don't need to explicitly add your target to .PHONY.

There are other reasons you want to move away from Make. For example:

* Defining variable in your target body requires workaround (ref: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1909188/define-make-vari...)

stephenr2• 7 years ago

So.. you just don't want to type `./my-script foo` you want to type `bud foo`.. Cool story bro.

Show HN: Bud – Command Runner inspired by Make

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