Mage as general purpose Bash replacement?

[mloskot]

Hi,

I'm new to Go and to Mage too. I've accidentally learned about Mage from kubernetes-sigs/sig-windows-dev-tools#203 and it intrigued me quite a bit, so I started reading about it.

The documentation says this:

Go is superior to bash for any non-trivial task involving branching,
looping, anything that's not just straight line execution of commands.

I'm eagerly looking for elaboration of this statement especially in context of general purpose scripting in Bash.

I maintain repositories with IasC where I also develop numerous Bash scripts - not Makeiles - for local execution as well as execution via CI/CD pipelines, for example:

• bootstrap and generate YAML manifests
• run Terraform and Infracost, generate feedback to GitHub as PR comments or issues
• run kubectl and Azure CLI to harvest details/inventory of platform/cluster resources and generate reports (Markdown, HTML)
• convenience scripts for visibility into Kubernetes resources

I'm interested to learn potential advantages and disadvantages if I switched to writing Magefiles instead of Bash.

Since I'm new to Go, a language ubiquitous in cloud and Kubernetes ecosystems, swithing to Mage would be an opportnity to learn Go with real purpose which I already see as a huge advantage. But, I'm wondering if there would be any serious technical disadvantages or even blockages hit by Mage in comparison to Bash.

[l50]

Hello! Mage would be a perfect fit to replace/drive/some hybrid of your existing bash stuff.

Here's an example of a magefile I have for my home k8s cluster:

https://github.com/CowDogMoo/Walls-of-Excellence/blob/main/magefiles/magefile.go

Here's another example of a magefile I have for my go utilities:

https://github.com/l50/goutils/blob/main/magefiles/magefile.go

You don't need to swear off bash completely either - there are tons of wonderful helper functions in mage. Here's an example of one:

https://github.com/l50/goutils/blob/1b53a306ccc59b58821b1a2d2ca199f98860a9e2/mageutils.go#L28

The beauty of mage in my opinion is the means to use the same functions you use for writing code in administrative utilities. If you write decent tests for your functions, you'll find a lot of happiness in the stability and reliability of this workflow.

Hope that helps!

[mloskot]

Hi @l50
Thank you for the feedback, great examples. It is exactly what I was looking for!

It also seems convincing to use magefiles/ folder convention even if I has just one magefile.go as it clearly helps to keep the project root clean.

[l50]

Happy to help, I'm very excited about the incredible things that this project provides.

A good reason to use the magefiles folder convention is to be able to call stuff like this:

mage installdeps 

versus (what I used to do):

pushd .mage
go build -o ../magefile
popd
./magefile installdeps

[mloskot]

I've made my first stab at Magefiles for kubernetes-sigs/sig-windows-dev-tools#259

Disclaimer: I've never written a single line in Go and this is my first attempt. It's been a very pleasant experience, thanks to Mage too!

[mloskot]

That Magefiles development moved to the the dedicated branch

• https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/sig-windows-dev-tools/tree/master-windows-native/magefiles