Task runner for Bash

Simple, lightweight task runner for Bash.

If you find any bugs, let me know by creating an issue.

1. Pre-requisites

Runner depends on:

bash >=4.0
coreutils >=8.0

These are very likely to be already installed on your Linux machine.

Note for Mac OS X users:

Use Homebrew to install the dependencies:

brew install bash coreutils

2. Installation

There are many different ways to use runner in your project.

Using npm:

## To install to your project folder
npm install --save-dev bash-task-runner

## To install globally
npm install -g bash-task-runner

Alternatively, you can simply download the src/runner.sh file and place it inside your project folder.

3. Usage

3.1. Setup

Create an empty bash script (runnerfile.sh), which is an entry point for the task runner.

Optional: If you want the runnerfile.sh to be a self-contained script, add this to the beginning:

#!/bin/bash
cd `dirname ${0}`
source <path_to>/runner.sh

3.2. Basics

Create some tasks:

task_foo() {
    ## Do something...
}

task_bar() {
    ## Do something...
}

Then you can run tasks with the runner tool:

$ runner foo bar
[23:43:37.754] Starting 'foo'
[23:43:37.755] Finished 'foo' after 1 ms
[23:43:37.756] Starting 'bar'
[23:43:37.757] Finished 'bar' after 1 ms

Or in case your script sources the task runner:

$ bash runnerfile.sh foo bar

You can define a default task. It will run if no arguments were provided to the task runner:

task_default() {
    ## Do something...
}

You can change which task is default:

runner_default_task="foo"

3.3. Task chaining

Tasks can launch other tasks in two ways: sequentially and in parallel. This way you can optimize the task flow for maximum concurrency.

To run tasks sequentially, use:

task_default() {
    runner_sequence foo bar
    ## [23:50:33.194] Starting 'foo'
    ## [23:50:33.195] Finished 'foo' after 1 ms
    ## [23:50:33.196] Starting 'bar'
    ## [23:50:33.198] Finished 'bar' after 2 ms
}

To run tasks in parallel, use:

task_default() {
    runner_parallel foo bar
    ## [23:50:33.194] Starting 'foo'
    ## [23:50:33.194] Starting 'bar'
    ## [23:50:33.196] Finished 'foo' after 2 ms
    ## [23:50:33.196] Finished 'bar' after 2 ms
}

3.4. Error handling

Sometimes you need to stop the whole task if some of the commands fails. You can achieve this with a simple conditional return:

task_foo() {
    ...
    php composer.phar install || return
    ...
}

If a failed task was a part of a sequence, the whole sequence fails. Same applies to the tasks running in parallel.

The difference in runner_parallel is if an error occurs in one of the tasks, other tasks continue to run. After all tasks finish, it returns 0 if none have failed, 41 if some have failed and 42 if all have failed.

3.5. Flags

All flags you pass after the task name are passed to your tasks.

$ runner foo --production

task_foo() {
    echo ${@} # --production
}

To pass options to the runner CLI specifically, you must provide them before any task names:

$ runner -f scripts/tasks.sh foo

To get all possible runner CLI options, use the -h (help) flag:

$ runner -h

3.6. Command echoing

runner_run command gives a way to run commands and have them outputted:

task_default() {
  runner_run composer install
  ## [12:19:17.170] Starting 'default'...
  ## [12:19:17.173] composer install
  ## Loading composer repositories with package information
  ## ...
  ## [12:19:17.932] Finished 'default' after 758 ms
}

3.7 Bash completion

The runner CLI supports autocompletion for task names. Simply add the following line your ~/.bashrc:

eval $(runner --completion=bash)

4. Example

This is a real world script that automates the initial setup of a Laravel project.

#!/bin/bash
cd `dirname ${0}`
source runner.sh

NPM_GLOBAL_PACKAGES="gulp bower node-gyp"

task_default() {
    runner_parallel php node || return
    if ! runner_is_defined ${NPM_GLOBAL_PACKAGES}; then
        runner_log_warning "Please install these packages manually:"
        runner_log "'npm install -g ${NPM_GLOBAL_PACKAGES}'"
        exit 1
    fi
}

task_php() {
    runner_sequence php_{composer,vendor} || return
    if [[ ! -e ".env" ]]; then
        cp .env.example .env
        runner_run php artisan key:generate
    fi
}

task_php_composer() {
    if [[ ! -e "composer.phar" ]]; then
        php -r "readfile('https://getcomposer.org/installer');" | php
    fi
}

task_php_vendor() {
    runner_run php composer.phar install
}

task_node() {
    runner_parallel node_{npm,bower}
}

task_node_npm() {
    if [[ "${1}" == "--virtualbox" ]]; then
        local npm_options="--no-bin-links"
        runner_log_warning "Using npm options: ${npm_options}"
    fi
    npm install ${npm_options}
}

task_node_bower() {
    bower install
}

runner_bootstrap
runner_log_success "Success!"

5. FAQ

Read the FAQ

6. Contribution

Please provide pull requests in a separate branch (other than master), this way it's more manageable for me to review and pull.

Before writing code, open an issue to get initial feedback and resolve potential problems. Write all feature related comments there, not into pull-request.

7. License

This software is covered by LGPL-3 license.

Contacts

Style Mistake <stylemistake@gmail.com>

mbrodala/bash-task-runner