swift-sh

I recently learned about swift-sh [1] which is the same thing as “uv run —script” but for swift files. I’ve been having a blast automating some macOS annoyances with small scripts that can use native macOS APIs directly, no more pyobjc. I also wrote an app to bring the startup folder functionality from Windows to the Mac to help me run these scripts at startup more easily [2] [1] https://github.com/mxcl/swift-sh [2] https://github.com/FuzzyIdeas/StartupFolder

Beyond the basics, the shell features with the biggest ROI beyond the basics are to quote properly and use namerefs and arrays (esp. to return values from functions), e.g., # find2ra arrayName {find arguments...} # Run find command and put results in array arrayName. find2ra() { # (error checking removed) local -r f2raVar="${1}" shift # map find entries to ra, using char=0 as delimiter mapfile -d $'\0' -t "$f2raVar" < <(find -dsx "${@}" -print0) # -print0: handle paths with spaces, etc. # -ds: For consistency, use depth-first, lexigraphic order # -x: Avoid traversing other devices } # sample usage ra=() find2ra ra . -type f -name \*.sh for shFile in "${ra[@]}"; do ... ; done There are many resources for shell scripts already. A good starting-point might be to list the awesome shell-scrip

Yes, swift CLI will compile and run your swift file. But many people also want to use libraries. For Python, they use the system libraries or work within an environment with installed libraries (i.e., the library-install process happens at environment-configuration time). In Swift, the easiest way to consume libraries is using packages, but that requires a Package.swift declaring the project scope for the script file (which must comply with top-level and main-entrypoint code requirements). The easiest way to do that when scripting is a swift tool that manages the process of gathering your library dependencies, auto-generating a project, building the tool, and caching it all so there's no overhead the next time. The best available tool now is https://github.com/mxcl/swift-sh. It reads dependency information off import comments. It can als

Interesting. I've resisted the pull of the Nix side so far... There's a similar package that auto-pulls dependencies for Swift scripts, but it requires you to explicitly state the external dependencies as comment annotations. The example given is: #!/usr/bin/swift sh import Foundation import PromiseKit // @mxcl ~> 6.5 firstly { after(.seconds(2)) }.then { after(.milliseconds(500)) }.done { print("notice: two and a half seconds elapsed") exit(0) } RunLoop.main.run() https://github.com/mxcl/swift-sh

The tricky part is that it is impossible to import any libraries in a script except: - The official libraries that ship with Swift - If you create a full-blown Swift package manager project and compile an executable. But this doesn't sound like a script anymore - If you use John Sundell's Marathon [https://github.com/JohnSundell/Marathon] however it adds additional complexity around the writing of scripts I.e. none of the solutions are as simple as writing a bash script Edit: Just saw that Max Howell (creator of Homebrew) released this today https://github.com/mxcl/swift-sh This absolutely solves the issues. Fantastic.