KO | EN

GitLite

Minimalist Open Source Repository Search Engine

gitlite — search

#developer-tools #typescript #claude-code #codex #dsh #dsh-plugin #ai-agent #ai-agents #deepseek-harness #agent-skills #macos #cli

rust_cmd_lib

★ 1,159 Open GitHub ↗

Common rust command-line macros and utilities, to write shell-script like tasks in a clean, natural and rusty way

// repository documentation

Was this content helpful?

★ 0 (0 ratings)

# cmd_lib

## Rust command-line library

Common rust command-line macros and utilities, to write shell-script like tasks
easily in rust programming language. Available at [crates.io](https://crates.io/crates/cmd_lib).

[![Build status](https://github.com/rust-shell-script/rust_cmd_lib/workflows/ci/badge.svg)](https://github.com/rust-shell-script/rust_cmd_lib/actions)
[![Crates.io](https://img.shields.io/crates/v/cmd_lib.svg)](https://crates.io/crates/cmd_lib)

### Why you need this
If you need to run some external commands in rust, the
[std::process::Command](https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/process/struct.Command.html) is a good
abstraction layer on top of different OS syscalls. It provides fine-grained control over
how a new process should be spawned, and it allows you to wait for process to finish and check the
exit status or collect all of its output. However, when
[Redirection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redirection_(computing)) or
[Piping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redirection_(computing)#Piping) is needed, you need to
set up the parent and child IO handles manually, like this in the
[rust cookbook](https://rust-lang-nursery.github.io/rust-cookbook/os/external.html), which is often tedious
and [error prone](https://github.com/ijackson/rust-rfcs/blob/command/text/0000-command-ergonomics.md#currently-accepted-wrong-programs).

A lot of developers just choose shell(sh, bash, ...) scripts for such tasks, by using `<` to redirect input,
`>` to redirect output and `|` to pipe outputs. In my experience, this is **the only good parts** of shell script.
You can find all kinds of pitfalls and mysterious tricks to make other parts of shell script work. As the shell
scripts grow, they will ultimately be unmaintainable and no one wants to touch them any more.

This cmd_lib library is trying to provide the redirection and piping capabilities, and other facilities to make writing
shell-script like tasks easily **without launching any shell**. For the
[rust cookbook examples](https://rust-lang-nursery.github.io/rust-cookbook/os/external.html),
they can usually be implemented as one line of rust macro with the help of this library, as in the
[examples/rust_cookbook.rs](https://github.com/rust-shell-script/rust_cmd_lib/blob/master/examples/rust_cookbook.rs).
Since they are rust code, you can always rewrite them in rust natively in the future, if necessary without spawning external commands.

### What this library provides

#### Macros to run external commands
- [`run_cmd!`](https://docs.rs/cmd_lib/latest/cmd_lib/macro.run_cmd.html) -> [`CmdResult`](https://docs.rs/cmd_lib/latest/cmd_lib/type.CmdResult.html)

```rust
let msg = "I love rust";
run_cmd!(echo $msg)?;
run_cmd!(echo "This is the message: $msg")?;

// pipe commands are also supported
let dir = "/var/log";
run_cmd!(du -ah $dir | sort -hr | head -n 10)?;

// or a group of commands
// if any command fails, just return Err(...), which is similar to bash's `set -euo pipefail`
let file = "/tmp/f";
let keyword = "rust";
run_cmd! {
    cat ${file} | grep ${keyword};
    echo "bad cmd" >&2;
    ignore ls /nofile;
    date;
    ls oops;
    cat oops;
}?;
```

- [`run_fun!`](https://docs.rs/cmd_lib/latest/cmd_lib/macro.run_fun.html) -> [`FunResult`](https://docs.rs/cmd_lib/latest/cmd_lib/type.FunResult.html)

```rust
let version = run_fun!(rustc --version | awk r"{print $2}")?;
info!("Your rust version is {version}");
```

#### Abstraction without overhead

Since all the macros' lexical analysis and syntactic analysis happen at compile time, it can
basically generate code the same as calling `std::process` APIs manually. It also includes
command type checking, so most of the errors can be found at compile time instead of at
runtime. With tools like `rust-analyzer`, it can give you real-time feedback for broken
commands being used.

You can use `cargo expand` to check the generated code.

#### Intuitive parameters passing
When passing parameters to `run_cmd!` and `run_fun!` macros, if they are not part to rust
[String literals](https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference/tokens.html#string-literals), they will be
converted to string as an atomic component, so you don't need to quote them. The parameters will be
like `$a` or `${a}` in `run_cmd!` or `run_fun!` macros.

```rust
let dir = "my folder";
run_cmd!(echo "Creating $dir at /tmp")?;
run_cmd!(mkdir -p /tmp/$dir)?;

// or with group commands:
let dir = "my folder";
run_cmd!(echo "Creating $dir at /tmp"; mkdir -p /tmp/$dir)?;
```
You can consider "" as glue, so everything inside the quotes will be treated as a single atomic component.

If they are part of [Raw string literals](https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference/tokens.html#raw-string-literals),
there will be no string interpolation, the same as in idiomatic rust. However, you can always use `format!` macro
to form the new string. For example:
```rust
// string interpolation
let key_word = "time";
let awk_opts = format!(r#"/{}/ {{print $(NF-3) " " $(NF-1) " " $NF}}"#, key_word);
run_cmd!(ping -c 10 www.google.com | awk $awk_opts)?;
```
Notice here `$awk_opts` will be treated as single option passing to awk command.

If you want to use dynamic parameters, you can use `$[]` to access vector variable:
```rust
let gopts = vec![vec!["-l", "-a", "/"], vec!["-a", "/var"]];
for opts in gopts {
    run_cmd!(ls $[opts])?;
}
```

#### Redirection and Piping
Right now piping and stdin, stdout, stderr redirection are supported. Most parts are the same as in
[bash scripts](https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Redirections.html#Redirections).

#### Logging

This library provides convenient macros and builtin commands for logging. All messages which
are printed to stderr will be logged. It will also include the full running commands in the error
result.

```rust
let dir: &str = "folder with spaces";
run_cmd!(mkdir /tmp/$dir; ls /tmp/$dir)?;
run_cmd!(mkdir /tmp/$dir; ls /tmp/$dir; rmdir /tmp/$dir)?;
// output:
// [INFO ] mkdir: cannot create directory ‘/tmp/folder with spaces’: File exists
// Error: Running ["mkdir" "/tmp/folder with spaces"] exited with error; status code: 1
```

It is using rust [log crate](https://crates.io/crates/log), and you can use your actual favorite
logger implementation. Notice that if you don't provide any logger, it will use env_logger to print
messages from process's stderr.

You can also mark your `main()` function with `#[cmd_lib::main]`, which will log error from
main() by default. Like this:
```console
[ERROR] FATAL: Running ["mkdir" "/tmp/folder with spaces"] exited with error; status code: 1
```

#### Builtin commands
##### cd
cd: set process current directory.
```rust
run_cmd! (
    cd /tmp;
    ls | wc -l;
)?;
```
Notice that builtin `cd` will only change with current scope
and it will restore the previous current directory when it
exits the scope.

Use `std::env::set_current_dir` if you want to change the current
working directory for the whole program.

##### ignore

Ignore errors for command execution.

##### echo
Print messages to stdout.
```console
-n     do not output the trailing newline
```

##### error, warn, info, debug, trace

Print messages to logging with different levels. You can also use the normal logging macros,
if you don't need to do logging inside the command group.

```rust
run_cmd!(error "This is an error message")?;
run_cmd!(warn "This is a warning message")?;
run_cmd!(info "This is an information message")?;
// output:
// [ERROR] This is an error message
// [WARN ] This is a warning message
// [INFO ] This is an information message
```

#### Low-level process spawning macros

[`spawn!`](https://docs.rs/cmd_lib/latest/cmd_lib/macro.spawn.html) macro executes the whole command as a child process, returning a handle to it. By
default, stdin, stdout and stderr are inherited from the parent. The process will run in the
background, so you can run other stuff concurrently. You can call [`wait()`](https://docs.rs/cmd_lib/latest/cmd_lib/struct.CmdChildren.html#method.wait) to wait
for the process to finish.

With [`spawn_with_output!`](https://docs.rs/cmd_lib/latest/cmd_lib/macro.spawn_with_output.html) you can get output by calling
[`wait_with_output()`](https://docs.rs/cmd_lib/latest/cmd_lib/struct.FunChildren.html#method.wait_with_output),
[`wait_with_all()`](https://docs.rs/cmd_lib/latest/cmd_lib/struct.FunChildren.html#method.wait_with_all)
or even do stream
processing with [`wait_with_pipe()`](https://docs.rs/cmd_lib/latest/cmd_lib/struct.FunChildren.html#method.wait_with_pipe).

There are also other useful APIs, and you can check the docs for more details.

```rust
let mut proc = spawn!(ping -c 10 192.168.0.1)?;
// do other stuff
// ...
proc.wait()?;

let mut proc = spawn_with_output!(/bin/cat file.txt | sed s/a/b/)?;
// do other stuff
// ...
let output = proc.wait_with_output()?;

spawn_with_output!(journalctl)?.wait_with_pipe(&mut |pipe| {
    BufReader::new(pipe)
        .lines()
        .filter_map(|line| line.ok())
        .filter(|line| line.find("usb").is_some())
        .take(10)
        .for_each(|line| println!("{}", line));
})?;
```

#### Macro to register your own commands
Declare your function with the right signature, and register it with [`use_custom_cmd!`](https://docs.rs/cmd_lib/latest/cmd_lib/macro.use_custom_cmd.html) macro:

```rust
fn my_cmd(env: &mut CmdEnv) -> CmdResult {
    let args = env.get_args();
    let (res, stdout, stderr) = spawn_with_output! {
        orig_cmd $[args]
            --long-option xxx
            --another-option yyy
    }?
    .wait_with_all();
    writeln!(env.stdout(), "{}", stdout)?;
    writeln!(env.stderr(), "{}", stderr)?;
    res
}

use_custom_cmd!(my_cmd);
```

#### Macros to define, get and set thread-local global variables
- [`tls_init!`](https://docs.rs/cmd_lib/latest/cmd_lib/macro.tls_init.html) to define thread local global variable
- [`tls_get!`](https://docs.rs/cmd_lib/latest/cmd_lib/macro.tls_get.html) to get the value
- [`tls_set!`](https://docs.rs/cmd_lib/latest/cmd_lib/macro.tls_set.html) to set the value
```rust
tls_init!(DELAY, f64, 1.0);
const DELAY_FACTOR: f64 = 0.8;
tls_set!(DELAY, |d| *d *= DELAY_FACTOR);
let d = tls_get!(DELAY);
// check more examples in examples/tetris.rs
```

### Other Notes

#### Minimum supported Rust version

cmd_lib(2.0)'s MSRV is 1.88.

#### Environment Variables

You can use [std::env::var](https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/env/fn.var.html) to fetch the environment variable
key from the current process. It will report error if the environment variable is not present, and it also
includes other checks to avoid silent failures.

To set environment variables in **single-threaded programs**, you can use [std::env::set_var] and
[std::env::remove_var]. While those functions **[must not be called]** if any other threads might be running, you can
always set environment variables for one command at a time, by putting the assignments before the command:

```rust
run_cmd!(FOO=100 /tmp/test_run_cmd_lib.sh)?;
```

#### Security Notes
Using macros can actually avoid command injection, since we do parsing before variable substitution.
For example, below code is fine even without any quotes:
```rust
fn cleanup_uploaded_file(file: &Path) -> CmdResult {
    run_cmd!(/bin/rm -f /var/upload/$file)
}
```
It is not the case in bash, which will always do variable substitution at first.

#### Glob/Wildcard

This library does not provide glob functions, to avoid silent errors and other surprises.
You can use the [glob](https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/glob) package instead.

#### Thread Safety

This library tries very hard to not set global state, so parallel `cargo test` can be executed just fine.
That said, there are some limitations to be aware of:

- [std::env::set_var] and [std::env::remove_var] **[must not be called]** in a multi-threaded program
- [`tls_init!`](https://docs.rs/cmd_lib/latest/cmd_lib/macro.tls_init.html),
  [`tls_get!`](https://docs.rs/cmd_lib/latest/cmd_lib/macro.tls_get.html), and
  [`tls_set!`](https://docs.rs/cmd_lib/latest/cmd_lib/macro.tls_set.html) create *thread-local* variables, which means
  each thread will have its own independent version of the variable
- [`set_debug`](https://docs.rs/cmd_lib/latest/cmd_lib/fn.set_debug.html) and
  [`set_pipefail`](https://docs.rs/cmd_lib/latest/cmd_lib/fn.set_pipefail.html) are *global* and affect all threads;
  to change those settings without affecting other threads, use
  [`ScopedDebug`](https://docs.rs/cmd_lib/latest/cmd_lib/struct.ScopedDebug.html) and
  [`ScopedPipefail`](https://docs.rs/cmd_lib/latest/cmd_lib/struct.ScopedPipefail.html)

[std::env::set_var]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/env/fn.set_var.html
[std::env::remove_var]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/env/fn.remove_var.html
[must not be called]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/edition-guide/rust-2024/newly-unsafe-functions.html#stdenvset_var-remove_var

License: MIT OR Apache-2.0

rust_cmd_lib

Explore Similar Repositories

Was this content helpful?

Recent Feedback

Download README