#yatte

A simple task runner

Make and Bash are useful tools but the syntax can be tricky, especially if you're writing Bash inside a Makefile. And sometimes you need the flexibility and expressivity of a proper programming language with a standard library.

If you know Ruby, you're probably already familiar with Rake; and for Python there's Invoke. But maybe you don't want to invest time in learning a new tool and its idiosyncracies.

Yatte is for when you just want to write a Python script and get back to work.

Design goals achieved:

• No new syntax for the user to learn: it's just plain Python.
• The user manual fits on an A4 page.
• Implemented in < 400 lines of Python, including comprehensive tests.
• No run-time dependencies except the standard library.

#Project links

• Documentation
• Source code
• Bug reports etc.

#Quickstart

Install the package:

pip install yatte

Create a file named tasks.py containing some functions decorated with @task:

from subprocess import run
from sys import exit, stderr

from yatte import task

@task("greet")
def hello():
    """Greet the world"""
    print("Hello, world!")

@task("list-files")
def list_files(dir):
    """List the files in the directory"""
    shell(f"ls {dir}")

def shell(cmd):
    print("sh>", cmd, file=stderr)
    p = run(cmd, shell=True)
    if p.returncode:
        exit(p.returncode)

Then call yatte by itself to list the tasks:

$ yatte
greet                   Greet the world
list-files dir          List the files in the directory

And yatte {task} to execute the given task:

$ yatte list-files .
sh> ls .
pyproject.toml README.md tasks.py

See the docs for more details.