Question

In Makefile‘s I can define tasks so that a user can specify what s/he wants to do as:

make run
make serve
make deploy
..

This seems to be working ok but I feel like Makefile‘s are an overkill for this purpose with all those dependency analysis and relatively obscure syntax/execution. Are there any language/tool that is specifically designed for this purpose preferably available on most systems? or any idea how to use something like bash for this purpose?

Answer 1

So after Arjun’s suggestion, I have come up with a sh script:

#!/usr/bin sh

# only one task at a time
if [ $# != 1 ]; then
    echo "usage: $0 <task_name>"
fi

run() {
    echo "I'm now running"
}

serve() {
    echo "I'm now serving"
}

deploy() {
    echo "I'm now deploying"
}

case $1 in
    "run")        run;;
    "serve")      serve;;
    "deploy")     deploy;;
esac

which was a lot easier than I imagined. I have named the file task so that I can now run the tasks as:

$ sh task serve
I'm now serving

or if the file is executable:

$ ./task deploy
I'm now deploying

There’s just a little bit duplication in switch statement but it’s good enough for me. Feel free to drop me a comment if it can get any better.