Xnt 0.2.3

Motivation

When writing something such as a build tool, there is always the question: “why?”. Why write yet another build tool?

Well, there are several reasons that are the backing motivation:

First, developing a variety of software, using one and only one build tool for every project is nearly (if not entirely) impossible. There is a desire to have a consistent build step and process when testing and deploying. Given the environment in which the code is written is heterogeneous, having one uniform build tool that wraps itself around the other ones (and has the ability to expand to new ones) is ideal.

Second, short of dropping into the language the build tool was written in, expanding some build steps is very difficult (or at least can be). Further there can be complicated build targets that require some interesting and potentially involved (smelly) procedures to be accomplished, that may or may not be easy to describe in the build file or in the native language. Therefore, having a wrapping build framework/ tool that is written in an easy to read and write language, such as Python, these complicated steps can depend less on some funky new build library (further adding to the dependency tree) and can become just implementation details (assuming, of course, you buy into Xnt first).

Last, and most certainly the least, I wanted to explore the idea. I wanted to write something that made me think about solving some of the problems challenged by such a tool.

What Xnt Is NOT

Calling Xnt simply a build tool is (grossly?) misleading. Xnt is not really a build tool in the traditional sense. Like stated above, it is more a wrapper around existing build tools. I didn’t want to replace what some of these tools already do really well (e.g. being able to describe how to compile an entire large Java program in several lines of code using Ant).

What Xnt IS

Xnt is a wrapping build tool, intended to be used with a multitude of sub-build tools, even in the same project. Regardless of the language the project is written in, Xnt should be able to suite your needs. If your language’s build tool is unable to do something concisely or cleanly, Python should help. [There could be more here… I can’t think of it though.]

Installing and Setting Up Xnt

Using Xnt is fairly simple. All you will need to do is install it, create a build.py file for your project, and invoke it just like any other build tool you have used before (e.g. $ xnt {target}).

$ python[2] setup.py install [--user]

$ pip install Xnt [--user]

Example build.py

Here is a simple build.py:

#!/usr/bin/env python

from xnt import target
from xnt.tasks import *
from xnt.builders import ant

@target
def init():
    mkdir("bin")

@target
def build():
    init()
    ant("build")

@target
def clean():
    rm("bin")

@target
def rebuild():
    clean()
    build()

@target
def package():
    rebuild()
    zip("bin", "packaged.zip")

@target
def default():
    package()

As you can see, it really just is a Python script. There really isn’t anything really special happening. We just import some of the Xnt modules, and define some targets. When you call xnt, it will be loading this script and call the target specified by {target} or, if you don’t specify one, it will call the target named default.

Features

• Version special target (as of 0.2.3)

  • Invoke Xnt with version and it will report the version of the currently installed Xnt

  • $ xnt version

• Help special target (as of 0.2.3)

  • Invoke Xnt with help and it will report the targets of the build file in the current working directory, along with any docstrings attached to those targets

  • $ xnt help

• Ability to add docstrings to targets (as of 0.2.3)

  • Using the familiar docstring syntax, you are now able to describe targets and have them displayed when calling the help target

  • Example Target:

    @target
    def myTarget():
        """Example docstring of target"""
        #do something

• Verbose Output

  • If you want to see more verbose output you may specify -v to Xnt

Issues

If you find any issues or would like to request a feature, please visit Bitbucket Issues.