Tuesday, 11 May, 2021 UTC
Summary
Bash is great, but when it comes to writing scripts, people usually choose a more convenient programming language. JavaScript is a perfect choice, but standard Node.js library requires additional hassle before using.zxpackage provides useful wrappers aroundchild_process, escapes arguments and gives sensible defaults.
I wouldn’t say JavaScript is a perfect choice for this kind of scripting, but it’s definitely a suitable one (especially if it’s the language you already know well). Here’s what scripting looks like with
zx:#!/usr/bin/env zx
await $`cat package.json | grep name`
let branch = await $`git branch --show-current`
await $`dep deploy --branch=${branch}`
await Promise.all([
$`sleep 1; echo 1`,
$`sleep 2; echo 2`,
$`sleep 3; echo 3`,
])
let name = 'foo bar'
await $`mkdir /tmp/${name}`
Top-level
await sure makes things nicer. (Deno supports this out of the box, btw.)Discuss on Changelog News