From Makefile to Justfile (or Taskfile): Recipe Runner Replacement

Discover the power of modern recipe runners as we transition from the traditional Makefile to Justfile (or stick to Taskfile). This video guides you through the reasons behind the switch, showing how these newer tools can simplify your development workflows. You'll learn about Justfile syntax, its capabilities, and the benefits it offers for task automation and reproducibility.

#Justfile #Taskfile #Makefile

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00:00 Introduction to just and Justfile
02:19 just Define Justfile and just Run It
07:47 just and Justfile Pros and Cons

[DevOpsToolkit]

What do you think of just and Justfile?

[mihaigalos]

Hi Viktor, awesome video! Thanks for taking the time to review this awesome Just project!
I've been using just for >2y and believe some of the features which are relevant here and already in just could get more love in the content:
* recipes with optional or variadic parameters.
* pre and post dependencies.
* inline bash variable expansion coupled with templating.
* runtime global variables via subshells.
* other justfile inclusion.
* I personally prefer vim to code and am using syntax highlighting there working just fine. Also there is bat syntax coloring for justfiles.

All of the above are there out-of-the-box and one can use them with minimal syntax and effort. Which is a far cry from shell.

[Jarek.]

Awesome! I like the simplicity, very much indeed. BTW: On just page, there is a lot of competitors:
*There is no shortage of command runners! Some more or less similar alternatives to just include:*

make: The Unix build tool that inspired just. There are a few different modern day descendents of the original make, including FreeBSD Make and GNU Make.
task: A YAML-based command runner written in Go.
maid: A Markdown-based command runner written in JavaScript.
microsoft/just: A JavaScript-based command runner written in JavaScript.
cargo-make: A command runner for Rust projects.
mmake: A wrapper around make with a number of improvements, including remote includes.
robo: A YAML-based command runner written in Go.
mask: A Markdown-based command runner written in Rust.
makesure: A simple and portable command runner written in AWK and shell.
haku: A make-like command runner written in Rust.

[flick]

Thank you! Going to stay with taskfile.
The only missing part for me was shared library, if just was having this feature I would thinking about moving. But thankfully its not😅

[IvanRizzante]

Thanks for another great video🎉 I agree with those saying that there's no need to replace or reinvent bash, I just want to add that maybe some people may feel more comfortable with writing Just code than start straightaway the bash journey

[dariusjuodokas]

IMO it's yet another way to reinvent bash.

Bash has all the pros and none of the cons (except for dry-run, which could also be achieved if you mock everything in $PATH)

And the bash's syntax flexibility does not mean you MUST use it as an advanced user. You CAN, but you don't HAVE to. And it's perfectly possible to create maintainable bash applications and "makefile" alternatives.

IDK, I personally don't see a point in using just/task/makefile. I fail to see what they can offer that bash can't. I mean, you're writing mostly bash in them anyways...

So "just" "make" a bash script, write all the "task"s as functions, and call it a day. --list -- `declare -F`. run -- `eval ${1:?Task missing}`. And so on.

Why reinvent what's already there...? Why....

[Jarek.]

I'm really impressed by Just. As for now only reason *not to switch* from Taskfile is that Just is missing feature called in Task "Prevent unnecessary work (...) - When given, Task will compare the checksum of the source files to determine if it's necessary to run the task". I couldn't find this feature in Just ... "just is a command runner, not a build system"

[AndreaGhensi]

Taskfile has an (incomplete, alas) shell interpreter and platform conditionals that help you write cross platform tasks; it also can check for conditions to skip unneeded tasks (for example I used to bootstrap my dev environments with task, before I learned about devbox from you!)

[betorvs]

Very good! Could you fix the "Transcript and commands" link? Is pointing to WASM post.

[MichaelBushey]

There's not enough Yaml in my life. The Serde Rust crate makes reading and writing Yaml files insanely easy. I simply do not grok how anyone can have issues with a config format that's designed to be easy to read. Yaml removes headaches and stress.

[dankobgd]

There is an evaluate command to see what variables will output i guess.
Also i prefer passing arguments in justfile compared to taskfile where you do -- thingy.

[MarcusXPX]

I actually like Yaml.
There's nothing wrong with it - on the opposite: it's user friendly, it's expressive, maybe 'just' maybe a bit too verbose.
So I will stick with Taskfile 😊

[ryanseipp]

I'd love to use either of these, but they both have one major downside. Neither are installed by default, or can be assumed to be present on Linux machines, meaning it's yet another thing devs need to install before they can get the project running.