buildtool.js

A simple task runner with minimal dependencies and web development in mind.

> npm i -g buildtool.js

Features

• Dependency-free
• Watch-mode
• Flag to select debug (default) / release profile
• Filename hashing

Usage

> node my.build.js [-w] [-h|--help] [--release]

-w	Watch files for changes after the first build.
--help  -h	Print a usage guide.
--release	Build in release mode (default is debug).

Build Configuration

buildtool.js is configured by defining tasks in a build configuration file.

Each task is composed of a glob pattern selecting the source file(s), a target file name and a function, that produces the target file.

Example:

// my.build.js

const { tasks, log } = require('buildtool.js');

tasks
({
    'src/(**).ts': ['dist/$1.js', async (src, dest) =>
    {
        log('tsc', dest);

        // compile typescript (src => dest) ...
    }],

    ...
});

A minimal but complete example of a build-configuration, that uses the sass package in order to compile scss, can be found in build.example.js.

Debug and Release profile

buildtool.js supports two build profiles:

• debug (default)
• release (selected when building with --release).

Tasks can freely implement specific behaviour for debug / release builds by checking the value of debug – a variable exported by buildtool.js:

const { tasks, log, debug } = require('buildtool.js');

tasks
({
    'src/(**).ts': ['dist/$1.js', async (src, dest) =>
    {
        log('tsc', dest);

        if (debug)
        {
            // Build profile is 'debug'
        }
        else
        {
            // Build profile is 'release'
        }
    }],

    ...
});

Filename hashing

Having web development in mind, buildtool.js provides a simple way to hash destination filenames, similar to webpack.

Filename hashing is turned off by default and may be enabled per task, by prefixing the source file name glob pattern with hash:.

Example:

const { tasks, log } = require('buildtool.js');

tasks
({
    'src/(**).ts': ['dist/$1.js', async (src, dest) =>
    {
        log('tsc', dest);

        // for 'src/main.ts':
        // output filename (dest): 'dist/main.js'
    }],

    'hash:src/(**).scss': ['dist/$1.css', async (src, dest) =>
    {
        log('scss', dest);

        // for 'src/home.scss':
        // output filename (dest): 'dist/home.ddce269a1e3d054cae349621c198dd52.css'
    }],

    ...
});

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buildtool.js - Lesosoftware 2022