Naming isn’t consistent with what make does and why it’s called Makefile.
Makefile is for make, which “makes files”.
You don’t “task files”
*file in general is wrong. Of course it’s a file
Taskfile: A Modern Alternative to Makefile
61–70 of 223 posts
Re: Taskfile: A Modern Alternative to Makefile
#62I 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…
So, what's your point exactly? There are plenty of tools for this that do it a lot better than Taskfile? Like, Ansible for example?
Also, what makes you think a build system doesn't or shouldn't do those things?
Also, you could just write a Shell script to do all of those -- what's the difference?
Re: Taskfile: A Modern Alternative to Makefile
#63Sorry for the plug, but I can't help myself everytime I read about task managers to notice you have to learn yet another DSL. DSL are the plague of our field, for one that is useful like SQL, you have a hundred that turn your life into hell. Make's DSL is already full of gotchas, but templated YAML based DSL are just insanity. They have so many footguns, and so little flexibility and ability to be debugged. After try…
Python is such a massive dependency though, people who code in python rarely realize how big of a barrier it is for people not in that ecosystem. Package management is insane and every project has its own way of dealing with it. Installing python by itself is a chore on many operating systems.
Agreed.
I wish more projects would compile their Python tool into a stand alone executable so that the users wouldn't have to deal with the installation process.
I will at some point write about how to do that with Python, so that the knowledge will more broadly available and maybe the community will grow the habit of doing it.
Meanwhile, I don't have more to offer than the "Relieving your Python packaging pain" procedure: https://www.bitecode.dev/p/relieving-your-python-packaging-p...
It's not perfect, but it's an improvement for any people that don't do a lot of Python but has to.
Re: Taskfile: A Modern Alternative to Makefile
#64I 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.
Targets can be conditionally defined, so a built-in help may be inaccurate.
Re: Taskfile: A Modern Alternative to Makefile
#65Sorry for the plug, but I can't help myself everytime I read about task managers to notice you have to learn yet another DSL. DSL are the plague of our field, for one that is useful like SQL, you have a hundred that turn your life into hell. Make's DSL is already full of gotchas, but templated YAML based DSL are just insanity. They have so many footguns, and so little flexibility and ability to be debugged. After try…
> templated YAML based DSL are just insanity The truest statement of all of HN It started off with configuration files, but then we needed logic, control flow, or variables; and for some reason nobody goes "ok, maybe we need an actual progamming language now" and instead we've created horrors beyond our comprehension. Azure Pipelines is the worst I've used: three types of variables, conditional statements return stri…
I have hopes that one day something like CUElang (https://cuelang.org) will become popular to be the configuration language of everything. Just enough logic to get by, but not turing complete, plus strong typing and embedded schemas.
However, for now there is just a single implementation in GO.
Re: Taskfile: A Modern Alternative to Makefile
#66I 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.
But Taskfile didn't improve anything about Make? Make has a huge user base, it's battle-tested in many environments, it has a ton of infrastructure around it...
Taskfile brings nothing to the table. It cannot compete with existing automation tools. It doesn't even promise to be better than existing automation tools...
I mean, give me at least some reason to believe it could be better than what I already have... to me it looks like the people who wrote it simply never saw what's already there. Kind of like a university project where students write a simplistic compiler for a subset of C language... It's nice that they tried their hand, but they have a long way before they actually produce something useful.
Re: Taskfile: A Modern Alternative to Makefile
#67I 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 l…
Can you use spaces in filenames with GNU make yet? Seems like a 47yo vestige when spaces in filenames weren’t really a thing…
Do we know that taskfile does any better than make on this front? It isn't mentioned in the article. Sounds like taskfile is runs on raw "command line string interpolation" just like good old make.
Re: Taskfile: A Modern Alternative to Makefile
#68It's a shame, IMO, that make hasn't really evolved. I've been at a few places that insist on still using them. They mostly work fine, but having PHONY littered everywhere gets a bit annoying. I don't think a successor can exist. Makefiles seem like the last of a dying breed - not because make is bad, but because there are better ways to accomplish this already. The market for people who've outgrown Makefiles but have…
Why do you think they haven't evolved? Latest versions give you access to Guile scheme as an extension language, not to mention that they extended over time for quite a bit. But it is all backwards compatible so old makefiles still run.
Make has no way to opt into lots of greybeard "best practices" by default, and the syntax is still difficult to deal with.
I want to keep the solver, which is pretty good. I want to keep the idea of targets, rules, recipes, which is what tools like Taskfile throw out that makes them not very attractive to me. I even want to keep a good chunk of the syntax for specifying these. But Make needs some kind of way to invoke it that switches off all the dumb shit.
- parse any reasonable whitespace indentation, for chrissake
- -r by default, or some way to opt into relevant sets of rules (e.g. `import "c"` to get CC, CFLAGS, %.o, etc.)
- Separate def syntax and namespacing for proper file-generating rules vs. phony rules, no more .PHONY or fake dependencies; also move stuff like .INTERMEDIATE or .PRECIOUS to the rule def.
- .DELETE_ON_ERROR, .ONESHELL by default, probably others I forgot
- better semantics for double-colon rules; once you know what the phony rules are you can make them operate in this mode by default and give better syntax for pre/post hooks, priorities, run-on-failure, etc.
- something solving the same problem as but less dumb than .SECONDEXPANSION (guile helps somewhat here but give me some help for the most common cases)
- stamp files implemented by some out-of-tree cache, they're just an optimization and I'd rather lose them now and then and have to rebuild, than have to keep adding them to every other tool's ignore lists.
As well as some actually new features to help manage targets without local inputs, e.g. smarter connectors for fetching dependencies from network resources.
Re: Taskfile: A Modern Alternative to Makefile
#69Sorry for the plug, but I can't help myself everytime I read about task managers to notice you have to learn yet another DSL. DSL are the plague of our field, for one that is useful like SQL, you have a hundred that turn your life into hell. Make's DSL is already full of gotchas, but templated YAML based DSL are just insanity. They have so many footguns, and so little flexibility and ability to be debugged. After try…
I am thinking there must be a doit kind of tool but using bash shell instead. Anyone aware of one?
People that love bash usually are comfortable with make.
Re: Taskfile: A Modern Alternative to Makefile
#70I 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 l…
Can you use spaces in filenames with GNU make yet? Seems like a 47yo vestige when spaces in filenames weren’t really a thing…
Does this suffer from all the common problems with yaml (like the "Norway problem", but many others)?