About nuke

nuke is a build and task management tool that allows Nu to be used to build Nu-based frameworks and applications.
It is inspired by the Ruby rake tool. Like rake, the nuke task system is completely general purpose, allowing nuke to be used for other varied tasks such as software testing, deployment, and management.

nuke can be used to build frameworks, applications, and standalone binaries, to run tests, and to setup and archive application data files. Here is an excerpt from Nu's main Nukefile:

(task "test" => "framework" "nush" is
     (SH "nutest test/test_*.nu"))

(task "doc" is
      (SH "headerdoc2html -o doc objc")
      (SH "gatherheaderdoc doc index.html"))

(task "default" => "nush")

; Build a disk image for distributing the framework.
(task "framework_image" => "framework" is
      (SH "rm -rf '#{@framework}.dmg' dmg")
      (SH "mkdir dmg; cp -Rp '#{@framework}.framework' dmg")
      (SH "hdiutil create -srcdir dmg '#{@framework}.dmg' -volname '#{@framework}'")
      (SH "rm -rf dmg"))

(task "install" => "nush" is
      ('("nuke" "nubile" "enu" "nutest") each: 
        (do (program)
            (SH "sudo cp tools/#{program} /usr/local/bin")))
      (SH "sudo cp nush /usr/local/bin")
      (SH "sudo rm -rf /Library/Frameworks/#{@framework}.framework")
      (SH "cp -pRfv #{@framework}.framework /Library/Frameworks/#{@framework}.framework"))

A Nukefile is just a Nu source file, so it can contain any Nu expressions. "task" is a Nu macro that creates and manages NukeTask objects, which are connected together to build a tree of dependencies.

Unlike make and rake, nuke doesn't support rules, so build tasks are created by looping over the necessary files.
Also, nuke doesn't yet have a way to extract and include header file dependencies, but generated dependencies can be easily added with lines like the following one, in which objectName and headerName are variables containing the names of respective files:

 (file objectName => headerName)

Usage

To use nuke, just type "nuke " at the command line.
Here are some common tasks:

application	builds an application, usually the default
run	builds and runs an application
debug	builds and runs an application, with standard out (and NSLog messages) going to the terminal
gdb	builds and runs an application inside gdb
test	builds and runs a suite of tests
framework	builds a framework
clean	removes build files
clobber	removes build files and build products
doc	generates documentation with nudoc

The tasks available depend on the contents of the Nukefile. nuke must be run in a directory that contains a Nukefile.