This release of kai is all about new features!
A lot of upfront work went into ensuring modular design, especially so that new features could be added relatively cleanly under a contract that I liked. The abstractions aren’t perfect yet by any means, and it may still be a little confusing for a newcomer writing their own plugin. We’ll work more on that in some future release.
But I did feel it was good enough to finally build more of the features that would put kai to good use. That said, here are the features currently available in kai. These examples are all available in the latest code release:
As before, you could enter shells with certain programs:
# The simplest possible Kaifile.
#
# Run `kai shell` to enter this environment on Linux or macOS.
shell {
packages: ["cowsay", "fortune"]
}
But now we have a more generic environment builtin which can be used to describe the same package set across the other new keys. For example: you can now create tasks and run them via kai run <task name>
# Run `kai run moo` to make the cow say a pithy quote!
environment cow {
packages: ["cowsay", "fortune"]
}
task moo {
environment: "cow"
run: ["sh", "-c", "fortune | cowsay"]
}
Try running this with kai run moo!
You can also run tasks together as part of a workflow (think CI). Run the below via kai run cowvolution:
# Workflows compose tasks and builds into one repeatable command.
# Run this one with `kai workflow cowvolution`.
environment cow {
packages: ["cowsay"]
}
task normalcow {
environment: "cow"
run: ["cowsay", "moo"]
}
task antiquitycow {
environment: "cow"
run: ["cowsay", "Non nobis solum nati sumus."]
}
task victoriancow {
environment: "cow"
run: ["cowsay", "doth mother know you weareth her drapes?"]
}
workflow cowvolution {
steps: [
"run normalcow",
"run antiquitycow",
"run victoriancow",
]
}
What if you want to package things together into a portably build-able derivation? You can! Here’s a little shell script which will combine cowsay and fortune to have the fortune piped into whatever cowsay has to say. Run via kai build <output-name> (in this case wisecow)
# You can build artifacts using the build command!
#
# This one combines `cowsay` and `fortune` to give you a
# `wisecow` binary.
environment cow {
packages: ["cowsay", "fortune"]
}
build wisecow {
environment: cow
run: [
"sh",
"-c",
"printf '#!%s\\n%s | %s\\n' \"$(command -v sh)\" \"$(command -v fortune)\" \"$(command -v cowsay)\" > wisecow && chmod +x wisecow"
]
output: "wisecow"
}
Finally, we have overlays, to help people run things that may not be in nixpkgs (kai itself needs this ability)
# Overlays add packages that are not provided directly by nixpkgs.
shell {
packages: ["rocpkgs.nightly"]
overlays: ["github:thebrandonlucas/roc-overlay"]
}
That’s it for now! Stay tuned!