lets

Simple CLI task runner

Lets takes the best from Makefile and bash and presents you a simple yet powerful tool for defining and running cli tasks and commands.

Just describe your commands in lets.yaml and lets will do the rest.

Very alpha software. Things may and will change/break

Install
Usage
Lets directory
Config
Env
Build
Test
Release
Versioning
Completion

Install

Shell script:

This will install lets binary to /usr/local/bin directory. But you can change install location to any directory you want

sudo curl -sfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lets-cli/lets/master/install.sh | sudo sh -s -- -b /usr/local/bin

Binary (Cross-platform):

Download the version you need for your platform from Lets Releases.

Once downloaded, the binary can be run from anywhere.

Ideally, you should install it somewhere in your PATH for easy use. /usr/local/bin is the most probable location.

Arch Linux:

You can get binary release from https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/lets-bin/

If you are using yay as AUR helper:

yay -S lets-bin

Also you can get bleeding edge version from https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/lets-git/

yay -S lets-git

Usage

Create lets.yaml file in your project directory
Add commands to lets.yaml config. Config reference

commands:
    echo:
      description: Echo text
      cmd: |
        echo "Hello"
    
    run:
      description: Run some command
      options: |
        Usage: lets run [--debug] [--level=<level>]
        
        Options:
          --debug, -d     Run with debug
          --level=<level> Log level
      cmd: |
        env

Run commands

lets echo
# will print Hello
lets run --debug --level=info
# will print
# LETSOPT_DEBUG=true
# LETSOPT_LEVEL=info#
# LETSCLI_DEBUG=--debug
# LETSCLI_LEVEL=--level info

Lets directory

At first run lets will create .lets directory in the current directory.

lets uses .lets to store some specific data such as checksums, etc.

It's better to add .lets to your .gitignore end exclude it in your favorite ide.

lets.yaml

Config schema

shell
mixins
env
eval_env
commands
- description
- cmd
- depends
- options
- env
- eval_env
- checksum
- persist_checksum

Top-level directives:

`version`

key: version

type: semver string

Specify minimum required lets version to run this config.

Example:

version: '0.0.20'

`shell`

key: shell

type: string

required: true

Specify shell to use when running commands

Example:

shell: bash

`global env`

key: env

type: string

Specify global env for all commands.

Example:

shell: bash
env:
  MY_GLOBAL_ENV: "123"

`global eval_env`

key: env

type: string

Specify global eval_env for all commands.

Example:

shell: bash
eval_env:
  CURRENT_UID: echo "`id -u`:`id -g`"

`mixins`

key: mixins

type: list of string

Allows to split lets.yaml into mixins (mixin config files).

To make lets.yaml small and readable its convenient to split main config into many smaller ones and include them

Example:

# in lets.yaml
...
shell: bash
mixins:
  - test.yaml

commands:
  echo:
    cmd: echo Hi
    
# in test.yaml
...
commands:
  test:
    cmd: echo Testing...

And lets test works fine.

`commands`

key: commands

type: mapping

required: true

Mapping of all available commands

Example:

commands:
  test:
    description: Test something

Command directives:

`description`

key: description

type: string

Short description of command - shown in help message

Example:

commands:
  test:
    description: Test something

`cmd`

key: cmd

type: string or array of strings

Actual command to run in shell.

Can be either a string (also a multiline string) or an array of strings.

The main difference is that when specifying an array, all args, specified in terminal will be appended to cmd array

Example single string:

commands:
  test:
    description: Test something
    cmd: go test ./... -v

Example multiline string:

commands:
  test:
    description: Test something
    cmd: |
      echo "Running go tests..."
      go test ./... -v

Example array of strings:

commands:
  test:
    description: Test something
    cmd: 
      - go
      - test
      - ./...

When run with cmd as array of strings:

lets test -v

the -v will be appended, so the resulting command to run will be go test ./... -v

`depends`

key: depends

type: array of string

Specify what commands to run before the actual command. May be useful, when have one shared command. For example, lets say you have command build, which builds docker image.

Example:

commands:
  build:
    description: Build docker image
    cmd: docker build -t myimg . -f Dockerfile

  test:
    description: Test something
    depends: [build]
    cmd: go test ./... -v

  fmt:
    description: Format the code
    depends: [build]
    cmd: go fmt

build command will be executed each time you run lets test or lets fmt

`options`

key: options

type: string (multiline string)

One of the most cool things about lets than it has built in docopt parsing. All you need is to write a valid docopt for a command and lets will parse and inject all values for you.

More info http://docopt.org

When parsed, lets will provide two kind of env variabled:

LETSOPT_<VAR>
LETSCLI_<VAR>

How does it work?

Lets see an example:

commands:
  echo-env:
    description: Echo env vars
    options:
      Usage: lets [--log-level=<level>] [--debug] <args>...
      Options:
        <args>...       List of required positional args
        --log-level,-l      Log level
        --debug,-d      Run with debug
    cmd: |
      echo ${LETSOPT_ARGS}
      app ${LETSCLI_DEBUG}

So here we have:

args - is a list of required positional args

--log-level - is a key-value flag, must be provided with some value

--debug - is a bool flag, if specified, means true, if no specified means false

In the env of cmd command there will be available two types of env variables:

lets echo-env --log-level=info --debug one two three

Parsed and formatted key values

echo LETSOPT_ARGS=${LETSOPT_ARGS} # LETSOPT_ARGS=one two three
echo LETSOPT_LOG_LEVEL=${LETSOPT_LOG_LEVEL} # LETSOPT_LOG_LEVEL=info
echo LETSOPT_DEBUG=${LETSOPT_DEBUG} # LETSOPT_DEBUG=true

Raw flags (useful if for example you wan to pass --debug as is)

echo LETSCLI_ARGS=${LETSCLI_ARGS} # LETSCLI_ARGS=one two three
echo LETSCLI_LOG_LEVEL=${LETSCLI_LOG_LEVEL} # LETSCLI_LOG_LEVEL=--log-level info
echo LETSCLI_DEBUG=${LETSCLI_DEBUG} # LETSCLI_DEBUG=--debug

`env`

key: env

type: mapping string => string

Env is as simple as it sounds. Define additional env for a commmand:

Example:

commands:
  test:
    description: Test something
    env:
      GO111MODULE: "on"
      GOPROXY: https://goproxy.io
    cmd: go build -o lets *.go

`eval_env`

key: eval_env

type: mapping string => string

Same as env but allows you to dynamically compute env:

Example:

commands:
  test:
    description: Test something
    eval_env:
      CURRENT_UID: echo "`id -u`:`id -g`"
      CURRENT_USER_NAME: echo "`id -un`"
    cmd: go build -o lets *.go

Value will be executed in shell and result will be saved in env.

`checksum`

key: checksum

type: array of string | mapping string => array of string

Checksum used for computing file hashed. It is useful when you depend on some files content changes.

In checksum you can specify:

a list of file names
a list of file regext patterns (parsed via go path/filepath.Glob)

a mapping where key is name of env variable and value is:
- a list of file names
- a list of file regext patterns (parsed via go path/filepath.Glob)

Each time a command runs, lets will calculate the checksum of all files specified in checksum.

Result then can be accessed via LETS_CHECKSUM env variable.

If checksum is a mapping, e.g:

commands:
  build:
    checksum:
      deps:
        - package.json
      doc:
        - Readme.md

Resulting env will be:

LETS_CHECKSUM_DEPS - checksum of deps files
LETS_CHECKSUM_DOC - checksum of doc files
LETS_CHECKSUM - checksum of all checksums (deps and doc)

Checksum is calculated with sha1.

If you specify patterns, lets will try to find all matches and will calculate checksum of that files.

Example:

shell: bash
commands:
  app-build:
    checksum: 
      - requirements-*.txt
    cmd: |
      docker pull myrepo/app:${LETS_CHECKSUM}
      docker run --rm myrepo/app${LETS_CHECKSUM} python -m app

`persist_checksum`

key: persist_checksum

type: bool

This feature is useful when you want to know that something has changed between two executions of a command.

persist_checksum can be used only if checksum declared for command.

If set to true, each run all calculated checksums will be stored to disk.

After each subsequent run lets will check if new checksum and stored checksum are different.

Result of that check will be exposed via LETS_CHECKSUM_CHANGED and LETS_CHECKSUM_[checksum-name]_CHANGED env variables.

IMPORTANT: New checksum will override old checksum only if cmd has exit code 0

Example:

commands:
  build:
    persist_checksum: true
    checksum:
      deps:
        - package.json
      doc:
        - Readme.md

Resulting env will be:

LETS_CHECKSUM_DEPS - checksum of deps files
LETS_CHECKSUM_DOC - checksum of doc files
LETS_CHECKSUM - checksum of all checksums (deps and doc)
LETS_CHECKSUM_DEPS_CHANGED - is checksum of deps files changed
LETS_CHECKSUM_DOC_CHANGED - is checksum of doc files changed
LETS_CHECKSUM_CHANGED - is checksum of all checksums (deps and doc) changed

Environment

lets has builtin environ variables.

LETS_DEBUG - enable debug messages
LETS_CONFIG - changes default lets.yaml file path (e.g. LETS_CONFIG=lets.my.yaml)
LETS_CONFIG_DIR - changes path to dir where lets.yaml file placed
LETS_NO_COLOR_OUTPUT - disables colored output

Build

To build a binary:

go build -o lets *.go

To install in system

go build -o lets *.go && sudo mv ./lets /usr/local/bin/lets

Or if you already have lets installed in your system:

lets build-and-install

After install - check version of lets - lets --version - it should be development

It will install lets to /usr/local/bin/lets and set version to development with current tag and timestamp

Test

To run all tests:

lets test

To run unit tests:

lets test-unit

To get coverage:

lets coverage

To test lets output we using bats - bash automated testing:

lets test-bats

# or run one test

lets test-bats global_env.bats

Release

To release a new version:

lets release 0.0.<n> -m "implement some new feature"

This will create annotated tag with 0.0. and run git push --tags

Versioning

lets releases must be backward compatible. That means every new lets release must work with old configs.

For situations like e.g. new functionality, there is a version in lets.yaml which specifies minimum required lets version.

If lets version installed on user machine is less than the one specified in config it will show and error and ask user to upgrade lets version.

Completion

You can use Bash/Zsh/Oh-My-Zsh completion in you terminal

Bash

Add source <(lets completion -s bash) to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile
Zsh/Oh-My-Zsh

There is a repo with zsh plugin with instructions

rkdl/lets

lets

Install

Usage

Lets directory

lets.yaml

Top-level directives:

version

shell

global env

global eval_env

mixins

commands

Command directives:

description

cmd

depends

options

env

eval_env

checksum

persist_checksum

Environment

Build

Test

Release

Versioning

Completion

`version`

`shell`

`global env`

`global eval_env`

`mixins`

`commands`

`description`

`cmd`

`depends`

`options`

`env`

`eval_env`

`checksum`

`persist_checksum`