qst - run things quickly (and easily)

qst (pronounced quickstart) is intended to be run in unfamilar environments, you pass it a file or a directory and it tries to detect what it is and how to run it.

• run qst or qst -h to see options and support project types

• qst hello_world.go: compiles and runs hello_world.go, rerunning after it exits or the file is saved

  quite fun for small things, just throw some code in a file, have qst watch and restart when appropriate.

• qst -step=test ... runs the tests for projects that support it

• qst -type=make ... to choose a specific type

• qst -command="custom-build {file}" ..., e.g. you can specify your own commands and only use the restart feature

• qst -remote github.com/heyLu/qst/examples/hello_web.rb, fetches a project from github and runs it

• qst -detect ... just displays the detected types (first would be chosen)

Why?

• for simple things, for example "run go build whenever i change this"
• when you forgot how to start something
• to learn go

qst is a simple tool, and will stay simple. it is not intended to replace anything, but to make your life a little bit simpler. there are more interesting things to remember.

for more, see introducing quickstart

I want that

Great! You can either download precompiled binaries (bsd64, linux64, mac64), install it using go get github.com/heyLu/qst or clone the repo and build it yourself to hack on it.

Building it yourself

(Just a reminder: Only do this if you want to improve it, otherwise go get github.com/heyLu/qst might be what you want instead.)

# set up $GOPATH as desired
$ export GOPATH=$PWD/.go         # choose whatever you want
$ go build qst
...
$ ./qst -h
Usage: qst <file>
...
$ ./qst examples/hello_web.rb
...
^C
$ ./qst examples/hello_web.go
...

Try changing something in the files, it's fun. :)

Adding more project types

If you're lucky, add one line to set a name, specify the scripts to run for the various steps and a dection pattern:

/* detect/detect.go */

// ...
&Project{"ruby", Commands{"run": "ruby {file}"}, matchPattern("*.rb")},
// ...

You can also check for the presence using matchFile("bin/rails"). If you need to do more you can also specify a Matcher function to detect the type.

Commands is simply a map from step to a shell command to run. You can use the {file} variable as a placeholder for the file argument you pass to qst.

Have a look at detect/detect.go to see more examples.

Ideas/todo

• watch many files (select by globbing)
• sometimes restarts twice after one save?
• more project types
• tests (how? lots of shellscripts could do it, but would be very cumbersome. current "architecture" doesn't allow mocking.)
• more steps:
  • install (packages using the dependency manager of the type)
  • init (create a new blueprint for projects)

any further ideas? if so, open an issue or better yet, implement it yourself and send me a pull request.