just VS cargo-release

Most projects I've worked on included a bunch of scripts for common tasks (installing dependencies, starting/stopping dev servers, testing and deploying changes, and so on). There are a few tools designed for this, such as Just (https://just.systems/) and Task (https://taskfile.dev/), and I know some people use Make as a task runner (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40333481), but I've always preferred the simplicity and universality of shell scripts.

Bin CLI is a tool I wrote to add some of the niceties of these tools to shell scripts: it works even when you're currently in a subdirectory, only requires you to type enough of the command (script) name to uniquely identify it, and allows aliases to be defined. It also allows a project's commands to be listed (along with some help text), supports subcommands, and supports tab completion of command names. Of course scripts can be written in other languages too, just by adding the appropriate shebang.

Collaborators/contributors who don't have Bin CLI installed can just run the scripts directly - so I can enjoy the benefits without adding a hard dependency or extra barrier to entry. However, I also added support for defining one-liner scripts/aliases in a config file (much like "npm run" scripts are defined in package.json) for times when I want to avoid creating many trivial/wrapper scripts for common tasks.

It is implemented as a single Bash script, with minimal dependencies, small enough to keep in my Dotfiles repo (62 KB). I also made .deb and .rpm packages so it can easily be installed system-wide.

I find `just` to be better suited than `make` for this use case: https://github.com/casey/just

The siblings comment is good too, and often I'll put all the various commands into a subdir, and `just` is just an interface to that, particularly so if the script gets complex.

Then, `just` is really a signal "hey, this repo supports this interface" and things like `just -l` for discoverability.

I don't like makefiles, but I've been enjoying justfiles: https://github.com/casey/just

I started using just [0] on my projects and have been very happy so far. It is very similar to make but focused on commands rather than build outputs.

Define your recipes and then you can compose them as needed.

[0] https://github.com/casey/just

just - https://github.com/casey/just

Welp there is absolute chaos in that thread -- guess it's not an April Fools joke.

I wonder if relying on CI for anything other than provisioning machines is a mistake -- maybe we should have never moved from doing things from local scripts written in $LANGUAGE.

That said, I'm probably biased since I'm a massive fan of things like `make` and more appropriately for the current age, `just`[0]

[0]: https://github.com/casey/just

> When a command has some cognitive requirements I create a script with some ${1:-default} values and I store them all in $PATH enabled local/bin

I would consider using just for this:

https://github.com/casey/just

Your coworker's experience is more principled: Make is a mediocre tool for executing commands. It wasn't ever designed for that. Although it is pretty common to see what you are mentioning in projects because it doesn't require installing a dependency.

For a repo where an easy to install (single binary) dependency is a non-issue, consider using just. [1] You get `just -l` where you can see all the command available, the ability to use different languages, and overall simpler command writing.

[1] https://github.com/casey/just

My problem with maintaining a changelog during development is it can serve as a source of merge conflicts. Instead, I follow Covnentional Commit style and manually write my changelog entries based on the commits. I have a tool [0] that can show me the relevant commits for a package in my repo and automates the entire release process, including doing sanity checks.

I also feel like releasing from CI is hard, especially if you have multiple packages in a repo [1], including

- You can't as easily introspect the process

- You can't as easily recover from failure

- Getting a lot of the nuance right, like handling releases concurrent to merging of PRs, is difficult

- When the workflow is an ever-present "release PR" that you merge when ready has issues with selecting which packages to release and at what version

I have been considering making a tool to generate changelogs from fragments. Been keeping notes at https://github.com/epage/epage.github.io/issues/23

[0]: https://github.com/crate-ci/cargo-release

[1]: https://github.com/MarcoIeni/release-plz/discussions/1019

You should combine step 1 and 2 with CI. Just tag a version in your git, push to remote and have CI auto build a release for you.

Use github actions or other setup for other backends.

Or go nuts with cargo-release.

https://github.com/crate-ci/cargo-release

https://github.com/cargo-bins/release-pr

tools like cargo-release

Just to check, are you aware of cargo-edit's cargo-set-version or cargo-release?

I released my first crate that provides a derive macro to easily obtain a name of a current variant in an enum as a string. I did it mostly to learn about procedural macros and the process of releasing a crate. I then found out there is strum which does this and much more. Nonetheless, I learned a lot and I found couple of nice tools like ```cargo-release and git-cliff.

I'll note there is an issue in the cargo-release repo where this kind of workflow is wanted. https://github.com/crate-ci/cargo-release/issues/119

cargo-release is on about the same level of features used

cargo-release automates the release process for your crate. For example, with clap, all I do is add entries to the CHANGELOG and run cargo release patch and cargo-release takes care of updating files, publishing to crates.io, tagging, and pushing.

Yes, developers from all three tools were sharing ideas with each other recently