Rox

Composable build tool inspired by Nox, Make & cargo-make

Rox gives you the ability to build your own devtools CLI using YAML files. Tasks and Pipelines are dynamically added to the CLI as subcommands at runtime. The flexibility of rox intends to makes it easier for dev teams to standardize their workflows without writing endless "glue" scripts.

The subcommands and their help messages are automatically populated at runtime from the name and description of each task.

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Roxfile Syntax
  • Version Requirements
  • File Requirements
  • Templates
  • Tasks
  • Pipelines
  • Putting it all Together
• Usage Examples

Installation

Currently, rox can only be installed via cargo. Install Rust to get the entire Rust toolkit, including cargo.

Once that's done, run cargo install rox and then rox --version to verify that the installation succeeded.

Roxfile Syntax

Version Requirements

Version Requirements are used to ensure that any required CLI tool matches your specified version requirements.

version_requirements:
  - command: "docker version --format {{.Client.Version}}" # Output: 20.10.23
    minimum_version: "20.10.7"
    maximum_version: "21.0.0"

  - command: "python --version" # Output: Python 3.9.13
    # Splits on spaces and grabs the last output token as the Version
    split: true 
    minimum_version: "3.8"

File Requirements

File Requirements ensure that certain expected files are present.

file_requirements:
  - path: "Cargo.toml" 
  
  - path: ".env"
    create_if_not_exists: true # Create the file if it doesn't exist, as opposed to throwing an error

Templates

Templates allow you to specify templated commands that can be reused by tasks. Values are injected positionally. These are intended to facilitate code reuse and uniformity across similar but different commands.

templates:
  - name: docker_build
    command: "docker build {path} -t rox:{image_tag}"
    symbols: ["{path}", "{image_tag}"]

Tasks

Tasks are discrete units of execution. They're intended to be single shell commands that can then be composed via pipelines. They are also able to leverage templates by specifying one with uses and injecting values with values.

tasks:
  - name: build-prod
    description: "Build the application dockerfile"
    uses: docker_build
    values: [".", "latest"]
    
  - name: "watch-run"
    description: "Run the application, restarting on file changes"
    command: "cargo watch -c -x run"

Pipelines

Pipelines are the canonical way to chain together multiple tasks into a single unit of execution. They also support parallel execution with the -p flag but it is up to the user to ensure that the tasks can be safely executed in parallel.

pipelines: 
  - name: example-pipeline
    description: Composes a few tasks
    tasks: ["task-a", "task-b", "task-c"]

Putting it all together

Now that we've seen each individual piece of the Rox puzzle, we can put them all together into a full roxfile.

version_requirements:
  - command: "docker version --format {{.Client.Version}}"
    minimum_version: "20.10.7"
    maximum_version: "21.0.0"

file_requirements:
  - path: ".env"
    create_if_not_exists: true

templates:
  - name: docker_build
    command: "docker build {path} -t rox:{image_tag}"
    symbols: ["{path}", "{image_tag}"]

pipelines:
  - name: build-all
    description: "Build a release artifact binary and Docker image"
    tasks: ["build-release-binary", "build-release-image"]

  - name: ci
    description: "Run all CI-related tasks"
    tasks: ["fmt", "test", "clippy-ci"]

tasks:

  - name: build-local
    description: "Build the application dockerfile"
    uses: docker_build
    values: [".", "local"]

  - name: build-prod
    description: "Build the application dockerfile"
    uses: docker_build
    values: [".", "latest"]

  - name: "clippy-ci"
    description: "Run Clippy with a non-zero exit if warnings are found."
    command: "cargo clippy -- -D warnings"

  - name: fmt
    command: "cargo fmt"

  - name: test
    command: "cargo test"
    description: "Run tests"

  # Release-related
  - name: build-release-binary
    description: "Build a release binary with cargo."
    command: "cargo build --release"

  - name: build-release-image
    description: "Build a production image for Docker."
    command: "docker build . -t rox:latest"

  - name: secret_task
    description: "This task isn't callable directly from the CLI, but is available to pipelines!"
    hide: true

Usage Examples

The following are command-line examples for running rox with various flags and subcommands.

Show Tasks/Pipelines:

rox task

rox pl

https://github.com/ThomasLaPiana/rox/assets/5105354/2041522d-4cb2-4c96-9655-c1802fdf16c8

Run a Task:

rox task build-binary

https://github.com/ThomasLaPiana/rox/assets/5105354/9f152b3b-8a65-4409-af5c-da029c3e8ae4

Run a Pipeline:

rox pl ci

https://github.com/ThomasLaPiana/rox/assets/5105354/02d99bc6-0dc1-4c33-a753-2868043c4d43

Run a Pipeline in Parallel:

rox pl -p build-release-all

Releasing

Rox is released by running cargo release locally.

Steps to Release:

1. Make sure that all desired changes are pushed up and merged to main
2. cargo install cargo-release (if not already installed)
3. cargo release [major|minor|patch] --execute - Updates the Cargo.toml, commits and pushes the change, and then publishes the crate to <crates.io>
4. cargo release tag --execute - Creates a git tag with the same version as the Cargo.toml
5. cargo release push --execute - Pushes the git tag
6. Finally, a CI job is automatically triggered to build and upload the release assets