JSMake

JSMake (Official Discord Server Id: 1055799829801996369) is a NodeJS library which aims on helping you make build scripts using JavaScript (or TypeScript, if you like, but JavaScript seems to be more convenient because you don't need to compile), an awesome scripting language. We use node as the officially-supported interpreter. You can also port this library to other platforms like deno if you like.

Why not makefile?

Yes. makefile is an awesome tool to make build scripts. If you really likes it, you don't need to learn how to use it painfully. We're not meaning to take makefile's place, but offer another choice for those Javascript-lovers who don't know makefile or shell scripts well to quickly build their build scripts. So if you're already fluent in using makefile and don't want to learn a new stuff similar, you can still use makefile as your build script language. Of course, if you want to learn and use this new library to write your build scripts even if you're fluent in makefile or other similar stuffs, welcome to the world of JSMake!

Installation

Can't you use npm install? I don't want to teach you again...
Hey! Don't hit on me 😉. Well, I'll write a little about how to install this.
First you need to create an node package in the directory where you want to build the project. Just cd to the directory and type:

npm init

And then, npm will tell you what information you need to input. Just like this. Easy peasy, huh? And then, type:

npm install @27onion/jsmake

OK, and that's all. Oops. I'm very tired now. If you have any question you can go to the Google or Stackoverflow to ask others! I don't want to teach you that how to use Google&Stackoverflow.

Usage

Create a new javascript source file and write the following in to the file:

const jsmake = require("@27onion/jsmake/jsmake");

after doing this, you can start to write the building codes. Thought JSMake also supports unmanaged build scripts, I still suggest you to use Tasks to make the build script more structured. Add a task just like this:

jsmake.task('your_task_name_here', async () => {
    // Any valid javascript code goes here
})

You can add more tasks if you need. After creating all the tasks you need, add the following code at the end of the file.

jsmake.build()

And then, do the following to start a task:

node /path/to/your_build_script <Task name goes here>

For more info, you can see the _compile.js in the package. This script is used to construct the JSMake itself.

The are two special kinds of tasks. The task with the name pre before will be always called by JSMake before the real task executes, and pre after will be called by JSMake after the build.

Basic Methods

Here are some basic methods in JSMake:

await jsmake.shell(`shell code here`)

This line of code calls the shell method of JSMake which allows you to execute a shell command. It also has an optional parameter echo which used to control if the command itself will be printed to the console.
In JSMake, there are lots of environment variables stored in thd jsmake.variables. You can access them directly.

C/C++ Build Supports

JSMake provides a bunch of methods to support many common operations, so actually you don't need to call shell so often (and usually most of those methods calls shell for you). One of the common operations we support is compiling C/C++ source files. The compiler was specified by the environment variable CC and CXX, which defaults to 'gcc' and 'g++' respectively. The compiler options was stored in the environment variable CC_FLAGS and CXX_FLAGS, which defaults to an empty string.
We can use the following code to compile C sources:

await jsmake.buildC("source1.c", "source2.c", "source3.c")

You can put all the source files and configure the CC_FLAGS if you need. There's also a similar method called buildCxx which does the same thing as buildC but use another set of environment variables starts with CXX_.

Files

We support a few file operations.

jsmake.rm("path/to/file")

This method can delete the file.

jsmake.dir("path/to/dir", (path_of_each_file) => {})

This method can iterate all the files in the directory and call the callback function with these files' paths.

jsmake.newer("path/to/file1","path/to/file2")

Returns true if file1 is newer than file2.

Technologic Details:

Method jsmake.newer() compares files by mtime.

jsmake.exists("path/to/file")

Check if the file exists.

File Selection & Including

In JSMake, Include a File means include the file into an environment variable SOURCE_INCLUDED and will never excluded until you exclude them explicitly. On the other hand, Select a File means that the file won't be included into any environment variable; Oppositely, the selected file will be stored in a private array, and will be deleted once you call commands like compileAllSeletedXX() or buildAllSelectedXX() or something similar. We use jsmake.selectSource(path_to_src) to select an source and jsmake.includeSource(path_to_src) to include a source. And you can you use await jsmake.compileAllSelectedAsC() to compile all the selected source as C. Also the method compileAllSelectedAsCxx in the module jsmake do the same thing as compileAllSelectedAsC (and also needs await if you want to keep the order), but use the environment variables that starts with CXX. JSMake provides includeAllSelected and selecteAllIncluded to transform between the included files and selected files.

NPM Support

JSMake supports npm as well as C. You don't need to use the following form to use npm:

await jsmake.shell(`npm op1 op2 op3 op4 ...`)

But use the following form.

await jsmake.npm('op1', 'op2', 'op3', 'op4', '...')

And it's not all. JSMake also provides some method to support some common NPM operations. They are:

await jsmake.nodePack.version('1.2.3')
await jsmake.nodePack.patch()
await jsmake.nodePack.publish()
await jsmake.nodePack.install('@27onion/jsmake')

These four methods is the equivalent of the following code:

await jsmake.npm('version', '1.2.3')
await jsmake.npm('version', 'patch')
await jsmake.npm('publish')
await jsmake.npm('install', '@27onion/jsmake')

Git support

JSMake also supports git as well.jsmake.git.isGitted() can test if the current directory has a file called .git. There are all the methods the JSMake supports:

jsmake.git.isGitted() {...},
async jsmake.git.init() {...},
async jsmake.git.add(...paths) {...},
async jsmake.git.push() {...}
async jsmake.git.pushWithOptions(...options) {...},
async jsmake.git.branch(...options) {...},
async jsmake.git.remoteAddOrigin(originName, url) {...},
async jsmake.git.remoteAddOriginForBranch(branch, originName, url) {...},
async jsmake.git.invoke(...options) {...}
async jsmake.git.commit(cmt) { ... }

Further Documentations

If you want to know more about this library and methods it provides, we've already written jsdoc documentation comments for every method/function, and we've also prepared a jsmake.d.ts for you. You can look them to get what you want.

Future Plans (May not be implemented but planning)

Here are some future plans for this project:

1. Support more options for buildTask. Such as, build the task only if some file exists, or build other tasks before building the task etc. Though you can also implement those features by yourself currently, it will be better to let the library do those things by offering an option. The extra option argument will be optional so it won't affect the existing build scripts.
2. Build a complete support for Rust, Java and other programming languages and tools, so you can easily process them without using the shell or shellRaw command which make your build script looks like a shell script. You should write most-used commands by calling javascript functions or methods instead of writing shell commands by your own.
3. Making a CLI for creating build scripts with templates and run build scripts in the working directory automatically and some other similar stuffs.

Example

Here is an example the is from the build script of the JSMake. JSMake is just constructed using JSMake. So in the task debug we just need to test some JSMake commands. Here is the code:

// JSMake, _compile.mjs
#!/usr/bin/env node

import jsmake from "./jsmake.js";

jsmake.includeSource('_compile.mjs')
jsmake.includeSource('jsmake.js')
jsmake.includeSource('package.json')
jsmake.includeSource('README.md')
jsmake.includeSource('jsmake.d.ts')
jsmake.includeSource('index.js')
jsmake.includeSource('tsconfig.json')
jsmake.includeSource('.hintrc')

jsmake.task('publish', async () => {
    await jsmake.buildTask('cleandbg')
    if (jsmake.newer('jsmake.js', 'jsmake.d.ts')) {
        await jsmake.buildTask('gendecl')
    }
    await jsmake.buildTask('push-git-for-release')
    await jsmake.nodePack.patch()
    await jsmake.nodePack.publish()
})

jsmake.task('cleandbg', async () => {
    jsmake.dir('.', (path) => {
        if (!jsmake.isIncluded(path) && !path.startsWith('.')) {
            jsmake.rm(path)
            console.log(`Cleared: ${path}`)
        }
    })
})

jsmake.task('debug', async () => {
    await jsmake.dir(".", (fn) => {
        console.log(`${fn} : ${jsmake.isIncluded(fn)}`)
    })
    console.log(jsmake.exists("jsmake.js"))
    console.log(jsmake.newer('jsmake.js', 'package.json'))
    console.log(jsmake.git.isGitted())
    await jsmake.shell("echo hello,world");
    await jsmake.shellRaw(["echo", "hello, world !!!"])
    await jsmake.shell("lsd -l")
    await jsmake.shell("echo \"Hello,    World!\"")
})

jsmake.task('gendecl', async () => {
    await jsmake.npm('run', 'gen_decl')
})

jsmake.task('push-git-for-release', async () => {
    if (!jsmake.git.isGitted()) {
        await jsmake.buildTask('enable-git')
    }
    await jsmake.git.add('.')
    await jsmake.git.commit('ready for release')
});

jsmake.task('enable-git', async () => {
    await jsmake.git.init()
})

jsmake.build()

Changes

v1.0.9: Added jsmake.d.ts to provide more info about the types.
v1.0.10: OK... they're deleted by my build script...
v1.0.11: Recovered jsmake.d.ts. Oops.
v1.1.2: Nothing special. (Don't ask me where is v1.1.0 because my build script will increase the version automaticly and so that I don't know how to figure that =( ) v1.1.3: Trying to fix that can't import the module. v1.1.4: Solved the problem issued in v1.1.3 by editing the README.md. =D
v1.1.5: Add a (rude) chapter in the README.md. v1.1.7: Add simple support for object files linking. v1.1.8: Add simple support for rust and java languages. v1.1.9: Changed how shell work. Added commit to the git support.
v1.1.10: Changed license to MIT.
v1.1.12: Some chore stuffs.