Alternative command runner to make (tasks/just/duty)

[dalito]

Make is problematic for Window users because it is typically not available. It is also quite challenging to write cross-platform shell commands and get escaping right. Make as a full build tool is naturally more complex than required for a simple command runner. Since we only need a command runner here, we may consider some alternatives.

I looked at

• tasks (written in go, cross-platform, yaml-syntax for task-definitions)
• just (written in rust, cross-platform, makefile-like syntax for task-definitions)
• duty (written in Python, cross-platform, python-file syntax for task-definitions, similar to invoke)

For just and tasks binaries are available for all platforms and installation is straight-forward (also on Windows). duty as a Python tool can be installed by pipx. Since linkML-project-cookiecutter users are already instructed to use pipx for cruft the installation of duty as command runner is the simplest one.

The syntax of tasks and just can be learned relatively fast, but I found it clearly more time-consuming than learning to define tasks in Python for duty. In duty I already know how to deal with cross-platform compatibility and have all great Python features like f-strings or path-manipulation available. So my favorite is duty.

I wrote a duties.py file that mostly matches the current makefile. - PR to come...

What do you think in general about this? Does it help? Does it add or reduce complexity?

[dalito]

In the meantime just can be installed via pipx as well. This is a nice surprise since the just devs said "not planned" when I asked for it a while ago. Since just is a much wider used tool, I closed the duty-based PR #121 in favor of a future just-based PR.

[sierra-moxon]

Hi @dalito - what do you think about creating a stand-alone package that takes a makefile as input and spits out a justfile as output?

From today's dev call, we were a bit wary about introducing a new build system at the cookie-cutter level. We understand the need for simplification of the build process for Windows users (and more generally, our cookie-cutter has a lot of functionality that we want to streamline). Perhaps (in the long term) we decrease the need for make or just and move more of this into python with config files?

[dalito]

I think converting from make to just in a reliable way gets too complex quickly. I could not find a good converter to help with creating the justfile from the PR. Also the AI systems were not able to produce good working code based on the makefile as input.

Perhaps (in the long term) we decrease the need for make or just and move more of this into python with config files?

I agree. A simpler config and the core project management commands available in Python (either from linkML or from this cookiecutter repo) would be better than yet another tool.