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Taskfile: A Modern Alternative to Makefile

cloudnativeengineer.substack.com

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Re: Taskfile: A Modern Alternative to Makefile

#21

Post by amno »

I don't understand this argument: "it's 47 years old" as a bad thing. If something has been around that long, does it not mean it is proof tested?

The syntax of Taskfile looks more verbose to me than Makefile, which is basically a shell script in disguise. To note also is that you praise Devenv because of it being based on Guix (Guile scheme), while you ditch Makefile which also embeds Guile scheme as the extension language (in latest versions).

Also to note, the opening argument, writing Readme files on how to build and use the software, has nothing to do with Makefiles at all. You could write a simple skeleton codegen that generates a Readme file skeleton or a template with those steps autogenerated in any language preferred, shell included, and run it as a Makefile target.

Re: Taskfile: A Modern Alternative to Makefile

#22

Post by feffe »

choeger wrote: post #12

So what does make (the took is not called Makefile, btw) "wrong". Where could one improve on it? 1. Syntax. Makefiles aren't parseable and have some at least unexpected syntactic properties. 2. Dependency detection: AFAIK any make will always use a timestamp and the precision varies a lot. A checksum or at least guaranteed resolution would be great. Also, you can't depend on directories. 3. Dynamics (this is going to…

- Multiple out file dependencies are also difficult to describe in make (GNU Make). There's a dedicated section for how to solve it in the manual[^1] but it's a crutch.

- Taking environment variables into account as a dependency (they may affect Makefile logic and also code generation by tools that interpret them).

[^1]: https://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/html_node/Multi...

Re: Taskfile: A Modern Alternative to Makefile

#23

Post by IceSentry »

rewmie wrote: post #18
ginko wrote: post #6

Just from reading the title i figured their idea of 'modern' was using something like yaml or json.

I found it amusing how the main features advertised for Task were the programming language used to write it, how it's distributed as a single executable, and how it's easy to install. None of them are relevant, or made any case for using it instead of just using the thing described in an international standard that is shipped by default in UNIX and Unix-like OSes for decades. It's like their selling point is to talk…

UNIX might be standard but it doesn't make it cross platform. You might not like it but a lot of people develop on windows. Build tools that assume a unix environment is present aren't a solution.

Re: Taskfile: A Modern Alternative to Makefile

#25

Post by account-5 »

raverbashing wrote: post #15

Ok cool, let's see what this is about > Taskfile is just a dialect of YAML format with a specific syntax I imagined that. Ok bye Just write a js or python script. Or even a shell script Makefile syntax is bad but frankly YAML was a bad idea. (slightly less than XML sure)

If I had the choice of yaml and XML I'd probably choose XML.

Re: Taskfile: A Modern Alternative to Makefile

#26

Post by trabant00 »

crabbone wrote: post #9

I have coworkers who use this. They tried to make me use this too. I failed to see the point. It offers no benefits of a build system, no benefits of existing automation tools, comes with "bespoke" syntax and requires installing an extra program to run it. I have never tested it enough to discover things it does wrong, but given how new and not exactly popular this tool is, I bet there are lots of things it doesn't d…

Because Make is too stable and well documented, because it's just one tool and not 3, because it isn't written in Go and because you don't have to scratch you head at another YAML hell. Because 47 years of proven track record is nothing compared to "modern". Need I go on?

Re: Taskfile: A Modern Alternative to Makefile

#27

Post by kmac_ »

crabbone wrote: post #9

I have coworkers who use this. They tried to make me use this too. I failed to see the point. It offers no benefits of a build system, no benefits of existing automation tools, comes with "bespoke" syntax and requires installing an extra program to run it. I have never tested it enough to discover things it does wrong, but given how new and not exactly popular this tool is, I bet there are lots of things it doesn't d…

I remember how I promoted Git over a decade ago, and I heard from the lead guy that “SVN does the same” and “there are no benefits of using branches” (he never used them). Please listen to your coworkers and don’t be that guy. Technology moves forward, make it great, but it’s time to move on.

Re: Taskfile: A Modern Alternative to Makefile

#28

Post by gorgoiler »

The command line entry points for your tooling need to be in the same language environment as everything else.

If your module in app/constants.py defines PORT which app/server.py serves and app/client.py connects to, how do you drop that same constant into your Makefile or docker-compose.yaml?

For me, literally everything including my docker, docker-compose, caddy, nginx, and of course the application code and all auxiliary scripts are presented as Python modules to solve this exact problem.

Re: Taskfile: A Modern Alternative to Makefile

#29

Post by strokirk »

crabbone wrote: post #9

I have coworkers who use this. They tried to make me use this too. I failed to see the point. It offers no benefits of a build system, no benefits of existing automation tools, comes with "bespoke" syntax and requires installing an extra program to run it. I have never tested it enough to discover things it does wrong, but given how new and not exactly popular this tool is, I bet there are lots of things it doesn't d…

Make doesn’t have any builtin —help for the list of user defined targets, and has a slightly wonky bespoke syntax of it’s own. So it’s quite natural to look for something that has those properties.

Re: Taskfile: A Modern Alternative to Makefile

#30

Post by datastack »

crabbone wrote: post #9

I have coworkers who use this. They tried to make me use this too. I failed to see the point. It offers no benefits of a build system, no benefits of existing automation tools, comes with "bespoke" syntax and requires installing an extra program to run it. I have never tested it enough to discover things it does wrong, but given how new and not exactly popular this tool is, I bet there are lots of things it doesn't d…

some tasks a developer might need to do besides just building the application:

- copying a database from production to local for bug reproduction/fixes - inserting seed-data into the local database - creating a migration after changing records - applying the migration - rolling back the migration - running a tool to copy configuration from a keyvault - running the end to end tests - generate certificates - set up an ssh tunnel to a remote server or database

All of these things are part of the development process, and cannot be part of the build system. Each of them has their own commands and tools.

All developers need to easily be able to do these things, without asking help each time, or learning the syntax of each command.

One easy way is to stuff all of them in a task runner with simple aliases. Another could be writing a document that you can copy/paste from. I prefer a task runner, since you can memorize the alias and work from the terminal without looking things up.

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