Task Runners

Make can be seen as a task runner that happens to come with file-based dependency management.

• Pro: Installed everywhere
• Con: You better hope your file names never contain spaces

Usage:

a-target-file: a-dependency
	echo "some shell command that runs to create a-target-file"

a-dependency:
	touch a-dependency

a-non-file-task:
	echo "this always runs"
.PHONY: a-non-file-task
# ^ this declares it to actually be a non-file task

make a-non-file-task

• Pro: name tasks pre- and post- to run them before or after other tasks
• Pro: You can run project-local tools installed with npm directly without having to specify npx
• Con: No dependency management

• Con: package.json has no comments.

  You can fake it by:

  • writing // lines anyways and hope that tools accept it
  • writing comments in a top-level "//" key
  • using duplicate keys and hope that tools are well-behaved and throw out the comment
  • using extra dummy keys like "scriptsComments"
  • writing extra scripts that echo a comment out

  But none of it beats actually having real comment syntax.

Usage:

Declare your tasks in package.json:

{
  "scripts": {
    "dev": "python -m http.server 8080",
    "preanother": "echo 'this is special and runs before `another`'",
    "another": "npm run dev",
    "postanother": "echo 'this is special and runs after `another`'",
    "yet-another-task": "mkdir public"
  }
}

npm run yet-another-task

This is also supported by Yarn (including Yarn 1):

yarn run yet-another-task

A bunch of scripts will also work.

• Pro: flexibility
• Con: you'll most likely end up writing a bunch of boilerplate

Example:

• ./utils/publish.sh
• ./utils/build.sh
• ./utils/lint.sh