README.md

build.go

build.go is a build system for compiling software packages.

History

After getting thouroughly fed up with common build systems (gnu make, maven, grunt, gulp), I used a simple shell script as a build pipeline for my next project. This quickly evolved into the first Go-based version of build.go, which included the ability to watch a source directory, and re-run certain build steps if changes were detected.

This approach worked so well that I copied and pasted the build script in another new project. And then another. When I was about to copy the build script to a fifth new project, I knew it was time to move the features common to each variant to a library. This way, project authors could write only the configuration specific to their project, and use this library for the heavy lifting.

It was then that I realised I had become what I set out to destroy.

Usage

Don't. If you must, create a file build.go somewhere in your project, like so:

package main

import (
	"context"

	build "github.com/thijzert/build.go"
)

func main() {
	wl := build.WatchList{
		Paths: []string{
			"cmd/fooServer",
			"pkg/fooPackage",
		},
		FileFilter: []string{"*.go"},
	}

	build.Main("fooServer", compile, wl)
}

func compile(ctx context.Context, conf build.CompileConfig) error {
	args := []string{"go", "build", "-o", "fooServer", "cmd/fooServer/main.go"}
	return build.Passthru(ctx, args...)
}

And then run go run build.go to build your project.

build.go defines several command-line flags, most of which set options in the CompileConfig:

• --development: sets Development to true.
• --quick: sets Quick to true.
• --version: sets the version in the config struct. If empty, build.go will attempt to determine the version number from the git repository from which it's running.
• --GOOS / --GOARCH: values are passed as environment variables GOOS and GOARCH to any build steps.
• --watch: watch the source tree, and re-run build steps if changes are detected.
• --run: if compilation is successful, start the resulting executable automatically.

Calling build.Main() will also call flag.Parse().

License

Copyright (c) 2023 Thijs van Dijk, all rights reserved. Redistribution and use is permitted under the terms of the BSD 3-clause (revised) license. See the file LICENSE or this url for details.