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Makefile -> Taskfile

Makefile

I add a Makefile to every project I work with. I don't usually work on C/C++ projects or any other compiled languages but Makefile is good to make aliases for long commands.

Here is an example of short version of Makefile I use:


.PHONY: up
up:
    docker-compose up -d

.PHONY: logs
logs:
    tail -f ./storage/logs/*.log

There are set of aliases / mnemonics that I used to:

`make up` - start the project. May be docker-compose or set of commands to turn the project into "running" state
`make down` - stop everything `make up` did
`make tags` - generate tags
`make logs` - watch logs where ever they are

Since I work with multiple languages and frameworks, thanks to this approach, I don't need to remember how to start a project, how to compile JS files, how to read logs, etc... All those commands are hidden under `make` targets.

On the other hand Makefiles aren't designed for such use. `make` is super powerful tool and using it as an alias system just feels wrong.

Taskfile

Taskfile - is just a shell script where you can define functions to call.


function up {
    podman-compose up -d --build
}

function down {
    podman-compose down
}

function npm {
    podman run -it -v `pwd`:/app -w /app node:latest npm $@
}

function composer {
    podman-compose exec app composer $@
}

TIMEFORMAT="Task completed in %3lR"
time ${@:-default}

Place this file in your project root, make it executable and you can call those aliases with `./Taskfile up` or `./Taskfile composer install`.

To simplify this a bit add this line to you bashrc/zshrc:

alias run=./Taskfile

Now you can call all those commands as `run up` or `run composer install`. Pretty handy.

This idea was borrowed from

Adrian Cooney

and his

Taskfile repo