Bob (the Builder)

Small scripting language for Rust build scripts.

Motivation

I normally use Nushell for my shell, but most people use Bash/Zsh. This means that for simple scripts I want to run to set up the environment for a program, I either need to:

1. Write two scripts (.nu and .sh)
2. Omit .sh so others can use but is a hassle for me
3. Omit .nu so I can use but is a hassle for others
4. Write the entire process in Rust itself

Now, Rust is absolutely awesome, but for doing a lot of really simple environment setup it just seems annoying and overkill. Now, I can write a small script and call it directly from the Rust code in my build.rs file.

Syntax

READ <filepath> -> <variable>
WRITE <filepath> <text>
PRINT <text>
APPEND <string1> <string2> -> <variable>

Putting them all together into a simple script would look like:

WRITE test.txt "why u so ugly bruh?"
READ test.txt statement
PRINT statement
APPEND statement " because i am dawg." -> reply
PRINT reply

If you save the script above to a file named example.btb, you can then run it inside your build.rs file like so:

use bob_the::Script;

fn main() {
    let script = Script::new("example.btb");
    script.run().unwrap();
}

Future

I want to keep this dead-simple, uber-bare-bones, but I'd also like to add the following features:

• FOR: for-loops
• HOME: returns user's home directory
• CONCAT: allow user to chain strings/variables together to build system paths

License

MIT