Mow

Overview

Mow is a lightweight Makefile/Rakefile alternative. It allows developers to turn python functions into a command line tools.

##Example

####Task defined in Mowfile:

from mow import task

@task()
def greet(name, greeting='Hello'):
	print '%s, %s.' % (greeting, name)

####Commandline Usage:

\> mow greet Bob
Hello, Bob.

\> mow greet --greeting="Goodbye" Bob
Goodbye, Bob.

Mowfiles

Mowfiles are where tasks are defined or loaded. The mowfile must have one of the following names:

mowfile, Mowfile, mowfile.py, or Mowfile.py

By default mow will search the current directory for the Mowfile but the -C/--directory option can be used to specify another location.

Multiple mowfiles can also be automatically loaded using the environment variable MOW_PATH. MOW_PATH should be a list of directories to search for the mowfile names listed above.

Note: $HOME/.mow will always be added as the first item in the MOW_PATH.

Built-in tasks

####list: Lists out all the currently available tasks.

Usage: mow list [namespace]

\> mow list

Built-in Tasks:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
help                     : Get help for a task.
list                     : List all available tasks.

Loaded Tasks:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
test                     : Mow test runner
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

####help: Prints out information about a task.

Usage: mow help TASK_NAME

\> mow help list
Built-in Task
Name: list
Usage:
    mow list [namespace]
Description: List all available tasks.

\> mow help list --extended
Built-in Task
Name: list
Usage:
	mow list [namespace]
Description: List all available tasks.
Author: brandonvfx
Version: 0.1.0
File: mow.py:234
Function: list_tasks

##Mow help

\> mow --help

usage: mow [-h] [-v] [-C DIRECTORY] task

Mow

positional arguments:
  task                  Task name

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -v                    Prints outs more info. -v = info, -vv = debug
  -C DIRECTORY, --directory DIRECTORY
                        Directory to find the Mowfile. Default: Current
                        directory.

Task Options

task(name=None, author=None, version=(0,1,0), usage='%prog %name')                              
                                                                                                
The decorated function's docstring is used as the description of the task.                 
                                                                                           
name (str): the name of the task, to namespace the task use a colon (':').  ex: db:migrate
            If no name is given the function name is used and '__' will be converted to ':' 
            to give it a namespace.                                                                      
author (str): just the name or email of the author.                                        
version (tuple): 3 int tuple of the version number.                                        
usage (str): Usage information. %prog will be replaced with 'mow'.                         
             %name will be replace with the name of the task.  

Commandline Usage

mow is pretty simple to use, it only has one required argument (task name) and one optional option (-C/--directory). All other arguments and options are passed into the task function as *arg and **kwargs.

/> mow db:migrate production --host=localhost

Translates to:
db_migrate(*('production',), **{'host':'localhost'})

There is no type casting is done before these values are passed to the task function so they will all be strings. There is only one case where this is not true, for an option without a value it is assumed to be a bool flags and its value will automatically be set to True

/> mow db:migrate production --host=localhost --dry-run

Translates to:
db_migrate(*('production',), **{'host':'localhost', 'dry_run':True})