idea: Introduce just for task runner

[Xuanwo]

Hi, we are currently working on tasks to parse Rust's configuration and generate APIs for bindings to enhance the experience of using our bindings. One challenge we face is how to implement this without adding extra burden on our developers.

Our initial plan was to use cargo-xtask. We added an alias here: https://github.com/apache/opendal/blob/93f3aa14bf4c7247af242ee36d8c644e57275c57/.cargo/config.toml#L19C6-L19C45, allowing developers to simply run cargo o abc to execute tasks.

However, since our project is not a Rust workspace, we are unable to call cargo o from subdirectories. I tried various methods to resolve this issue, but none were successful.

So I'm thinking about introducing just for task runners, so our developers can call:

just generate
just release

Just has some incredibly useful features:

• It's not make.
• It's written in Rust.
• It has excellent Justfile discovery and fallback logic.
  • We can call just everywhere in the project
  • We can fallback to parent if the command not included in current dir's justfile.

Essentially, we will still implement scripts in Rust, but we will execute them through just.

It's not a strict requirement for developers and contributors; they can continue using npm and cargo. However, they may eventually migrate to just once they realize how easy it is to use.

What do you think?

[tisonkun]

I think we need a prototype to start the discussion. Bare YES or NO would receive YES where people don't know clearly what they vote to.

Generally, I feel just is make. You still need to write some random commands/scripts; nothing different.

[tisonkun]

But yes since our project is not a workspace, we can hardly go through the xtask way and we can remove the related code now.

[Xuanwo]

But yes since our project is not a workspace, we can hardly go through the xtask way and we can remove the related code now.

It works to parse Rust code in syn, and building tools with Rust code seems appealing to me. We can still write the logic this way, but perhaps we should just remove the alias.

[jorgehermo9]

I think this will be very beneficial for newcomer contributors (myself included)

Maybe a command to run CI checks? just ci... If every CI check can't be ran (I'm thinking about some integration tests), at least, the most common ones. I think this will improve new developers experi ence in troubleshooting by a lot

[tisonkun]

It's landed at #5461.

So this thread can be considered as resolved. However, I'd still keep it open for a while if anyone would suggest or contribute more for further development.