jog

jog is a task runner with no string substitution.

Help

Run a task defined in a jogfile

Usage: jog [OPTIONS] [TASK] [ARGS]

Arguments:
  [TASK]  The name of the task to run
  [ARGS]  Arguments to pass to the task

Options:
  -l, --list     List tasks and their parameters
  -h, --help     Print help
  -V, --version  Print version

Tasks are run in $SHELL. Arguments are passed as shell variables. For tasks defined with a final
parameter of '...', extra arguments are passed as positional arguments.

Example

In a new jogfile, define a task to greet the caller by name.

greet name
  echo "Hello ${name}"

Which we can run by calling:

> jog greet Callum
Hello Callum

We can also define what to do if we call greet with no arguments. Note that it's fine to call a task recursively.

greet
  jog greet World

So now:

> jog greet
Hello World

Finally we can use ... to define a task which works for any number of arguments. Extra arguments are passed as positional arguments.

greet ...
  for name in "$@"; do
    jog greet "${name}"
  done

> jog greet Alice Bob
Hello Alice
Hello Bob

Jogfiles

A jogfile consist of a number of tasks. Each task begins with a header line listing the name of the task, the parameters for the task, and optionally ..., all separated by spaces. ... indicates that a task accepts any number of additional unnamed positional arguments. The script to be executed when the task is run follows the header, indented by at least one space. Lines beginning with # are ignored.

jog searches all ancestors of the current directory for jogfiles starting at the current directory and runs the first matching task.

No string substitution?

Other task runners (make, just) pass arguments to tasks by substituting them in to the body of the task itself. jog instead passes arguments as shell variables, so tasks are standard shell scripts with no additional templating syntax.

Concretely, a task like

greet name
  echo "Hello ${name}"

expands to

name="$1"; shift
  echo "Hello ${name}"

Install

With brew:

brew install callum-oakley/tap/jog

With cargo:

cargo install jog

Alternatively, there are binaries for Linux, MacOS, and Windows attached to each release.