Tasks#

nupp tasks                  # list build targets, test, self-host, and tasks
nupp tasks docs-serve       # one task's effective configuration
nupp task docs-serve        # run it
nupp task docs-serve --no-build   # extra arguments reach the task's command

nupp tasks (plural) lists what a project is configured to do — build targets, the configured test command, self-hosting, and named tasks — and inspects any one of them by name. nupp task (singular) is the one that runs a named task: builds tasks.<name>.build first if it names one, then execs tasks.<name>.argv with anything after <name> appended.

Configuring one#

return {
   include = { "src" },

   tasks = {
      ["docs-serve"] = {
         description = "Build the docs site and serve it",
         argv = { "node", "scripts/docs-serve.mjs" },
      },
   },
}

 Key          Required  Means
 ───────────  ────────  ────────────────────────────────────────────
 argv         yes       The command, as an argv array
 description  no        Shown by `nupp tasks`
 build        no        A build target to build first
 env          no        Environment variables, as string to string

Unlike test, which always builds — there is exactly one test command and it answers for code that has to exist first — a task only builds when build names a target. Most won't: argv can be anything that runs, and building is one thing a task might need on the way, not something every task means.

What this is for#

test and selfHost are two fixed-purpose instances of the same shape: build something, then run a command. tasks generalizes that to any number of named ones — the commands a project runs by hand often enough to want a name for, rather than a comment saying what to type. A dev server that serves the docs site and the playground together (scripts/docs-serve.mjs) is this repository's own tasks.docs-serve.

It is not a general process supervisor: nupp task runs one argv and returns its exit code, the same as nupp test does. A task that starts a server runs in the foreground until it's stopped (Ctrl+C), same as running that command directly would.