devrc VS cargo-make

I have been using Makefile for over 10 years in all of my projects, and here are some features I've always found lacking in Makefile:

1. There is no way to display documentation for commands and accepted parameters. Yes, you can write a special task that will display comments, but you have to copy it from project to project.

2. The need to pass named parameters when calling tasks. I want to write `make serve localhost 3000` instead of `make serve bind=localhost port=3000`

3. I've always had the need in different projects to use the same commands, so I had to copy tasks from project to project. I need a central place with commands that I can apply to any project.

4. The ability to write tasks in different languages. In some cases, it's easier to write in Python or TypeScript/Deno.

5. And most importantly, it is difficult to write commands in Makefile that can be used in different environments. For example, I need to run commands on different groups of servers: production and staging. This could look like: `make production TASK1 TASK2` or `make stage TASK1 TASK2`. In other words, the production/stage task sets up the parameters for executing tasks in a specific environment. It might be possible to call commands in this way with Makefile, but it seems too complicated.

As a result, I decided to write my own utility for task automation: https://github.com/devrc-hub/devrc

It solves all of the above problems and has other interesting features and also written in Rust .

I create some examples with loops and filters:

cargo-make aims to be an extensive Rust-written task runner that additionally lets you define workflows to execute your tasks. You can install it using cargo install cargo-make.

You might be interested in cargo-make, which is based on TOML, or Just, which has a syntax that is vaguely inspired by Make but much less weird sigils and more suited to non-file-based tasks.

I would like to rewrite this project in Rust, but I am not so familiar with Cargo as I am with Make. Is it possible to declare these kinds of rules and targets ? Should I use a build script, a custom tool like cargo-make or something else ? What do you think ?

I use just myself, and I personally don't want projects' codebase to decide when something gets cargo installed on my system. For people who feel that's more acceptable, I'll note that cargo-make has first class support for the idea of expressing a task that depends on a cargo plugin:

Thank you for the help, created ticket #787 and #788!

https://github.com/sagiegurari/cargo-make

I ended up using it over just because it felt easier to use cross platform, and toml seemed like a right choice

cargo make is used pretty extensively in Bottlerocket OS

Cargo is a pretty robust build tool on it's own, but for that extra automated workflow oomph, I also use cargo-make