Named script tasks

[mtdowling]

Cyan allows you to run scripts but you have to manually provide the script file and arguments each time. If it allowed for defining a map of task names to scripts and their arguments, then Cyan can help reduce the need for other build tooling like Makefiles to automate calling these scripts. It should support running to files directly without needing to compile them yourself. Packages managers like NPM support a similar feature.

[euclidianAce]

Cyan does allow for running scripts in response to build events like files changing. For example cyan itself uses one to generate the rockspec.

Is this the kind of script running you want? Or are you referring to something more like a task runner where you could say

cyan run-task-or-whatever gen-rockspec

and gen-rockspec is defined to do something by tlconfig.lua

return {
   tasks = {
      ["gen-rockspec"] = ...
   }
}

[mtdowling]

Sorry, yes I meant that: named arbitrary tasks like you said. However, I suspect that if Cyan added support for more lifecycles and accompanying hooks (e.g., "test", "package", "publish"), then it would obviate a lot of the need for this feature request.