torchbear

This Project is Currently in Stealth Mode.
please do not post a news story until v1 is released very shortly.
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Torchbear gives you a simple, yet powerful, general-purpose application development environment. It can help you do web automation, embedded programming, data analysis, numerical computing.. really anything you can imagine.

It's built in Rust, but you don't need to learn Rust to use Torchbear, because it aims to give you the simplest possible programming environment with the most powerful addon libraries. Scratch, BASIC, Lua, Python, Ruby, NodeJS etc developers should feel right at home... and with what one might call "more bells and whistles" - or just complete.

Those without a programming background can learn Lua in 15 minutes to be able to "speak" its programming langauge (its syntax and notation). You only need general scripting skills to start.

As you wish to solve more use cases with your programs, you can access Torchbear's functions, which are described below and viewable in the bindings' documentation (generated using our code map app). Every module is completely built-in and coded in pure Rust, or otherwise safely wraps a C library (noted with an asterisk*).

Built-in Modules

Environment

• Actix actor-model concurrency framework (see RFC 613 for more info)
• Actix Lua safe Lua scripting environment for Actix
• rlua* Lua 5.3.5 (also with tools for traceback error messages, logs, and performance profiling)
• Actix Web HTTP/1.x and HTTP/2.0 web servers and clients

System

• Standard filesystem operations plus recursive copying
• Standard directory cross-platform config, cache, and data paths
• Standard process environment inspection and manipulation
• Standard environment terminating to abort and exit the current process
• Standard memory querying, aligning, initializing, and manipulating
• Chrono time/date generation and verification

Crypto

• Libsodium* cryptographic signing and verifying, and encrypting and decrypting
• Blake2 cryptographic hash function
• Checksumdir deterministic directory hashing

Number

• libm* mathematical functions, like exponential, power, trigonometric, hyperbolic, floating-point manipulation, classification

String

• UUID-rs UUID generation and verification
• ulid Universally Unique Lexicographically Sortable Identifier
• Heck case conversions
• regex matching and replacing
• MIME type guessing

Structured Text

• SCL safe serializing/deserializing
• YAML serializing and deserializing using serde
• JSON serializing and deserializing using serde
• Tantivy searching, indexing, schema building, and document adding, updating, and deleting

Unstructured Text

• Tera template rendering similar to Jinja lang
• Comrak Markdown to HTML outputting
• Tantivy searching, indexing, schema building, and document adding, updating, and deleting
• Select-rs HTML scraping

Archive

• Zip file decompression
• Tar file decompression
• xz lzma file decompression

Diff

• Diff unidiff generation using strings and text files
• Patch unidiff processor for text files
• Split Diff to break unidiff files into multiple
• List Diff to list files affected by a unidiff
• Interdiff** help wanted to compare diff files
• Git* cloning, pulling, repo creation, staging, committing, and log access (builtin, no git dependency)

Additional Lua Libraries and Frameworks

• Torchbear Libs · libraries for logging, terminal coloring, event triggering, functional programming, graph data processing, argument parsing (todo), and file patching (todo)
• Torchbear Libs Dev · a library for inspecting tables
• ContentDB · a document-oriented, file-based database (see also ContentDB-Lua)
• Lighttouch · a simple, event-driven, rule-based, dynamically-loaded, functional, parameter-populated, configurable, version-controlled application framework

Get Started

Torchbear comes as a single executable (eg. as a binary .exe file) which makes it easy to install and easy to run apps. It also comes with a package manager, called Machu Picchu, which helps you to download more apps.

Install

To install Torchbear, run this command using your terminal (what's a terminal?):

 curl https://git.io/fpcV6 -sSfL | bash

The installer automatically gets the latest version (which is also available on Torchbear's GitHub releases page) and puts it in a convenient file location for you. To do this, it downloads the latest zip file for your operating system and hardware architecture, then it unzips the executable to a place where it will run as a command. You can do that manually or differently, as you like.

What is a terminal?

If you haven't heard of a terminal before, here's a 1 min intro to what is a terminal window. This works on Android, Windows, MacOS, and Linux devices very similarly, but you might need one other tool first:

• Android: install Termux.

• Windows: install Cmder Full (within your user directory, eg not in Program Files).

• MacOS: mostly ready out-of-the-box.

• Linux: mostly ready out-of-the box.

• iOS: work in progress, see Torchbear iOS build (iPhone and iPad)

• Redox: work in progress, see Torchbear Redox release

Uninstall

curl https://git.io/fpcV6 -sSfL | bash -s -- --uninstall

or, if you have install.sh already downloaded:

bash install.sh --uninstall

Development

Hello World App

1. put this in init.lua:

#!/usr/bin/env torchbear

print("hello from Torchbear")

2. make it executable with chmod +x init.lua

3. then run it with ./init.lua

Note: Machu Picchu also works as a dependency manager, making deploying and developing component-oriented software easy. Check how other projects use it until more documentation is available. Also can start finding some useful library scripts for your programs in our Lunar Transit account.

Rust Development

You can compile from source by installing Cargo (Rust's package manager) and installing torchbear using Cargo:

cargo install torchbear

Compiling from this repository also works similarly:

git clone https://github.com/foundpatterns/torchbear
cd torchbear
cargo build --release

Compilation will probably take several minutes depending on your machine and your network speed. The binary will end up in ./target/release/torchbear.

App Stores

• Found Patterns Studio App Store (installed by default)
• yours?

Contributors wanted

Torchbear extends Rust's growing library ecosystem. Developers and users alike are welcomed to participate in Torchbear's issue queue for small changes and high impact contributions. Everyone is invited.

Even moderately experienced Rust developers can work on adding bindings or adding other functions. There are many examples to learn from in the bindings directory. Through this process, you'll learn a Rust library's API inside and out, and you'll put another tool into the hands of a thriving userbase.

Experienced Rust developers' reviews would be greatly appreciated, eg those familiar with low-level library idioms and especially those well-versed in Actix. Much of the power functionality built-in to Torchbear comes from libraries like Actix, Actix-Web, Actix-Lua, rlua, and many more well-picked ones which need thorough review and careful analysis to make a good programming environment.

Users who who want to add a 'review' or 'story' about your use cases, simply add this "issue label" (type/review) or (type/story). Everyone is welcomed to do so, and this will help users and developers understand Torchbear from eachother's points of view. Developers who want to post other feedback and analysis will receive a hearty thank you.

Community

Eveyone interested in learning and solving problems with programming and open-source tools in general is welcomed to come to Found Patterns Studio's Discord Server to meet fellow engineers and to work together on team-driven projects, like Torchbear. If you haven't heard of Discord before, you could start with these videos, Discord For Dummies: Basic Use and Set up Instructions for Discord App and How To Setup And Use Discord - Basic Overview Of Features and Tools. We use it to help eachother use and build Torchbear and many other projects. It's a safe and friendly place to get things done.

Backers

To back this project and join this list, ask Mitchell for more info on Discord.

Sponsors

To sponsor this project and put your logo here, ask Mitchell for more info on Discord.

Thank you · Namaste · Aloha 👋