[jchw]

I find the use of rake to be kind of unorthodox, and yet I don't know what else you'd use in the Go world, other than maybe just Makefiles. Any particular reason to choose Rake? It's probably not easy to get it running on Windows based on my experience playing with Rails on Windows.

Other than that it looks quite useful, and it's definitely something to keep in the tool belt. Bonus points for the subtle Undertale references too :)

[beefsack]

When I've been working in Go projects which required external helpers of some sort, I've always just written them as separate Go binaries because they're relatively simple and quick to get up and running.

I've started doing this for my Rust projects too because Rust is becoming a really nice language for writing these sorts of things, and having a separate binary as a Rust file in src/bin is convenient.

Often you want to use some logic from the main application in your tasks and using the same language streamlines that.

[mjk7841]

I'm also curious about this. It seems that many go developers out there are using Makefiles. Makefiles are a good solution for golang projects in some cases, but I've seen a lot of people really abusing Makefiles and trying to use them for more generic task running.

In a past life, we used invoke [1] for task running. It was incredible but has the same problem as rake: it introduces another language (Python) and more dependencies.

There's a fairly new task runner being developed in go called mage [2], but it didn't seem worth the jump yet to me as it's still pretty immature (I haven't played with it in a few months, though). Did you consider trying that out?

[1] https://github.com/pyinvoke/invoke [2] https://github.com/magefile/mage

[anonfunction]

I like using make even for basic task running. It’s usually installed where I’m working and is familiar. I don’t want to install rake or mage.

[arbie]

Make gets a bad rap but I've seen it being used for susbtantially complex workflows. If you wrap your commands in something that can reattach to running processes and use dependencies correctly, it is hard to displace.

[MartijnBraam]

I've used make as an static site generator, it is actually very neat for that purpose and makes rebuilds quite fast and parallel.

[davars]

I just started using godo [1] and I like it so far. Implement tasks in Go, bash, or the provided wrappers around os/exec.

Biggest advantage over a generic tool like Make is that you can import your project dependencies (such as your database configuration) into your task.

[1] https://github.com/go-godo/godo

[timlyo]

Just [0] is a pretty great generic task runner incase anyone is looking for one. It's written in Rust so it doesn't introduce any new languages (single binary install) and it uses a make inspired syntax but aims to avoid some of Make's issues.

[0] https://github.com/casey/just

[ENTP]

I've used task with much success https://github.com/go-task/task

[blowski]

What’s wrong with using Make for running generic tasks?

[eloff]

I use matr[1], which is lets you define your build functions/tasks as ordinary go functions. There's a complementary library for issuing shell commands.

I like keeping just one language and tooling, but the biggest benefit to me is I'm always forgetting the arcane bits of shell syntax, and using Go saves me from having to search it all the time. Despite being more verbose than bash, I find it saves me time overall.

[1] https://github.com/matr-builder/matr

[barsonme]

I just write homebrew "makefiles" with Go. The language kinda doubles as a scripting language almost, so I've found it much nicer than makefiles.

[reificator]

I find it helpful when CI providers run Go tooling by default, except if there's a makefile in which case they run that instead.

[jatoben]

I like Mage (https://magefile.org).

[komuW]

There's mage.

https://github.com/magefile/mage