Utley is all of the following things:

• A dog (he’s Top Dog, actually).

• A second baseman.

• A Python build tool.

The Big Idea

All targets are only concerned with minifying and/or uglifying JavaScript, CSS and JSON. So, whether top-level or nested, all targets should be an array consisting of one or more objects with the following properties:

Property | Description
------------ | -------------
src | The location of the source file or directory to be processed.
output | The location where the build artifact will be written. Note it will create any directories it needs and overwrite any existing file(s).
dependencies | This allows one to specify the order with which the files should be processed. Obviously, any file in this list will not be processed twice. (optional)
exclude | Any files that should be ignored. (optional)
name | Allows the target to have a name that later targets can reference. This is an optimization, as later targets can use the cached build artifact. (optional)

If nested, the tool will recurse until it finds one or more of the aforementioned technologies, which are considered the recursion’s terminal case.

For example, the following targets are top-level objects:

"css": [{
    "src": [
        "../PeteJS/resources/css/",
        "resources/css/"
    ],
    "output": "build/music_theory.css"
}, {
    "src": "app/quizzes/chord_builder/",
    "output": "build/quizzes/chord_builder/quiz.css"
}, {
    "src": "app/quizzes/key_signature/",
    "output": "build/quizzes/key_signature/quiz.css"
}],

"js": [{
    "name": "Pete",
    "src": "../PeteJS/src/",
    "output": "build/pete.js",
    "dependencies": [
        "Pete.prototype.js",
        "Pete.js",
        "Pete.Observer.js",
        "Pete.Element.js",
        "Pete.Composite.js"
    ]
}, {
    "src": [
        "@Pete",
        "app/app.js"
    ],
    "output": "build/music_theory.js"
}],

"json": [{
    "src": "app.json",
    "output": "build/app.json"
}],

...

(Note the reference to the @Pete target name. This allows the build/music_theory.js artifact to reference the cached build/pete.js artifact, which in this case is going to concatenate app/app.js to it.)

These can be called like:

utley js
utley css
utley json
utley js css json

Further, the targets can be nested objects:

"quizzes": {
    "chord_puzzle": {
        "css": [{
            "src": "app/quizzes/chord_puzzle/",
            "output": "build/quizzes/chord_puzzle/quiz.css"
        }],

        "js": [{
            "src": "app/quizzes/chord_puzzle/",
            "output": "build/quizzes/chord_puzzle/quiz.js"
        }],

        "json": [{
            "src": "app/chords/sevenths/basic.json",
            "output": "build/chords/sevenths/basic.json"
        }, {
            "src": "app/chords/sevenths/advanced.json",
            "output": "build/chords/sevenths/advanced.json"
        }]
    },

    "chord_builder": {
        "css": [{
            "src": "app/quizzes/chord_builder/",
            "output": "build/quizzes/chord_builder/quiz.css"
        }],

        "js": [{
            "src": "app/quizzes/chord_builder/",
            "output": "build/quizzes/chord_builder/quiz.js"
        }]
    },

    ...

These can be called like:

utley quizzes
utley quizzes.chord_puzzle
utley quizzes.chord_builder

Again, as long as the base cases are js, css and/or json, everything will Just Work.

For everything else, you can specify a task. This is analogous to npm’s scripts block.

"tasks": {
    "clean": "rm -rf build",
    "lint": "eslint app"
}

These can be called like:

utley --clean
utley --lint

The previous snippets were taken from the utley.json build file in my Music Theory repo.

CLI Examples

Targets

Build only the CSS target.

utley css

Build only the JavaScript target.

utley js

Build multiple targets.

utley js css quizzes

Build a nested subtarget.

utley foo.bar.quux

Build whatever you want.

utley clean css quizzes.chord_builder my_custom_target

Tasks

Tasks must be pre-defined in the tasks block.

Clean

utley --clean

Lint

utley --lint

Test

utley --test

Mix Targets and Tasks

Must be space-delimited.

utley --clean --lint js css

Other

Build all targets (assumes an utley.json build file).

utley

Specify a different build file than the default utley.json.

utley -c foo.json

List the build target.

utley -l build

Some utley.json Examples In The Wild

• build file in benjamintoll.com repo.
• build file in Music Theory repo.
• build file in notefile repo.
• build file in PeteJS repo.

Usage

Property | Description
------------ | -------------
-c | The location of the build file. Defaults to `utley.json`.
-h | Help.
-l | Dump a target to STDOUT.
-s | Does not print log information to STDOUT (will print ERROR messages).
--{task} | Runs the shell command in the `tasks` block.
-v | Print build information.

License

GPLv3