acts

Small terminal menu to run commands.

Demo

Given a configuration file like this:

# example_config.toml
[todaysdate]
name = "Today's date"
description = ""
command = "echo $(date)"

[listdir]
name = "List directory"
description = ""
command = "ls -lah"

The program can be invoked like this:

$ eval "$(acts example_config.toml)"

And then first you will see this menu displayed in your terminal:

  acts                                  
  use wasd, jk, or arrow keys           
  enter to select, q or esc to exit     
  -----------------------               
> List directory                               
  Today's date

And when you select an option, the command will be executed and then executed by your shell.

Design Considerations

These are the design considerations:

Commands should be executed by YOUR shell, not inside acts. This decreases surface area for me to worry about, and ensures the best cross-platform compatibility. My examples above are for bash, but it should work with any shell as long as that shell can distinguish between stdout and stderr, and has a way to eval or otherwise execute a command.
Different collections of commands for different circumstances. That is what the toml config file is for. You can have different config files for different projects, or different config files for different parts of the same project. So the actions can be customized for the situation.
Few dependencies, the less the better. I use std to parse args for example, instead of bigger libraries like clap. I would have loved to use a config file format supported by std but there are none, so I use toml which is a small dependency.

Future plans

justfile support

I would like to add justfile as a supported config file format. In this case, I would just populate the menu with commands from the justfile and execute them with just. A problem to be solved is what to do with just commands that take parameters.

npm's `package.json`

I would like to add support for package.json as a config file, allowing you to run npm scripts from the menu.

Dev workflow

While working on the Rust code, it can be invoked like this:

$ eval "$(cargo run -- example_config.toml)"

cjrh/acts