makesure

makesure, a similar tool (https://maximullaris.com/makesure-vs-just.html) I'm developing, doesn't require installation in the traditional sense: https://github.com/xonixx/makesure#installation. Also, I was considering adding the same feature (generating the equivalent shell script) to my tool, but after doing some analysis decided not to pursue this idea for the following reasons: https://github.com/xonixx/makesure/issues/83#issuecomment-98....

Another simple tool similar to this is makesure[1]. It’s written in shell so the idea is you include makesure itself in your repo, which avoids needing to install another tool to run commands on your project. It’s very simple so isn’t good for everything, but works well as a simple command runner. [1] https://github.com/xonixx/makesure

>There's tons of incompatible dialects. I think that shows the problem with what you're saying. To my knowledge the major dialects in use are: - One True Awk (aka bwk) (https://github.com/onetrueawk/awk) - this one is bundled in all *BSD/macOS - Gawk (https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/) - this one is bundled in most Linux - mawk (https://invisible-island.net/mawk/) - bundled in some Linux distros (?), known as the fastest byte-code compiled implementation. All three have very good compatibility, but Gawk is super-set over POSIX standard. I have some evidence here, since I regularly test [1] against these implementations and even some others, like GoAWK. [1] https://github.com/xonixx/makesure/actions/runs/1830978431

I would kindly disagree here. I myself been dedidacted Python lover in past for many years now came to a conclusion that what can be scripted with AWK, should be scripted in AWK (over Python, Ruby, Perl, etc.). I'm not saying that you should write big apps though, but for small scripts AWK is absolutely fine alternative to major scripting languages with lots of benefits. Been universally available (as part of POSIX) and very compliant (language standard is almost unchanged for over 30 years now). As they say: "Good programmer chooses the most powerful tool for the job, best programmer chooses the least powerful tool for the job". Also see [1]. There is absolutely nothing wrong in learning AWK. It's very small language you can grasp fully in hours or days, and be sure you know it all, since it's very unlikely it chanages any time soon. Bes

I've been using make to do this for ages, but its syntax really shows its age in a bad way. A while ago I switched to just (https://github.com/casey/just), which is a simple command runner with less unnecessary cruft (for my use case as a command runner) and a much saner syntax, and I've been pretty happy with it so far, I hardly ever need to look up anything. There's also task (https://taskfile.dev/), which is YAML-based and might work well in an environment where everything else is YAML anyway, and makesure (https://github.com/xonixx/makesure), which is pretty similar to just, but didn't really click with me.

Idempotence is achievable elegantly with makesure tool [1] using @reached_if directive [2]. Full disclosure - I’m the author of the tool. [1] https://github.com/xonixx/makesure [2] https://github.com/xonixx/makesure#reached_if

I personally have found that AWK is a surprisingly good alternative to shells for scripts bigger than average. Why? 1. Portability (AWK is a part of POSIX) 2. Very clean syntax 3. Powerful associative arrays 4. Super-powerful string manipulations facilities 5. Easy shell interoperability As an example here is a simplistic build tool [1] I’ve developed in AWK. As you can check [2] it runs unchanged under Linux/macOS/Win (via Git Bash). [1] https://github.com/xonixx/makesure/blob/main/makesure.awk [2] https://github.com/xonixx/makesure/actions/runs/702594092