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App::cpx

Published at

9/5/2024

Background

I'm sometimes doing Front End dev.

Or sometimes the best tool for the job is only installable via npm.

It can be scripts to "uglify" or "beautify" css/js, optimize svg files (svgo) or clients to SaaS platforms (wrangler).

Actually, it's not that important if it's part of javascript ecosystem, what I want is just to execute them!

The usual process: I start testing it locally, quickly and in a "trash-able" way, then install in a continuous integration pipeline, then forget 😄

So far, do you feel some resemblance with some periodical process or yours?

For this purpose, I'm using frequently npx (now part of npm).

Do you see now where I'm going to? 🤔

App::cpx, a `npx`-like for CPAN

I just uploaded App::cpx for this purpose.

Give cpx a binary and it will find it in CPAN, install it for you then execute it.

$ cpx hr -s 40
🎯 Found [bin/hr]
📦 Release to install [https://cpan.metacpan.org/authors/id/W/WO/WOLDRICH/App-term-hr-0.11.tar.gz]
🔧 Will install into /home/tib/cpx-test/.cpx
DONE install Term-ExtendedColor-0.504
DONE install App-term-hr-0.11
2 distributions installed.
=======================================

(purpose of hr is to draw horizontal lines)

Or another example with mlocate:

$  cpx mlocate Redis Moo
🎯 Found [bin/mlocate]
📦 Release to install [https://cpan.metacpan.org/authors/id/C/CE/CELOGEEK/App-Module-Locate-0.7.tar.gz]
🔧 Will install into /home/tib/cpx-test/.cpx
DONE install Module-Locate-1.80
DONE install Module-Build-0.4234
DONE install App-Module-Locate-0.7
3 distributions installed.
/usr/local/share/perl/5.34.0/Redis.pm
/usr/local/share/perl/5.34.0/Moo.pm

mlocate is a script that lives in App::Module::Locate. It's an utility to "find a module by its name".

cpx saves you from some frustrating tries:

Is it cpm install App::mlocate?
OK try capitalize cpm install App::Mlocate, I know some authors do that
Hmm maybe simply locate like this cpm install App::locate
Oh wait, capitalize cpm install App::Locate
Raaah! Stop it and open MetaCPAN and search
OK it's cpm install App::Module::Locate but now it's installed locally, how do I set local::lib? Maybe I should install globally
Hmm I will install globally even if it can be a bit dirty for a one time use

And at start were you 100% sure mlocate was something that exists in CPAN? 🤔

cpx saves you from this pain and hides you the internals of installing the module, if missing.

When running cpx again, it won't reinstall but reuse the already installed binary:

$ cpx mlocate Redis Moo
⚓ Found executable already installed
/usr/local/share/perl/5.34.0/Redis.pm
/usr/local/share/perl/5.34.0/Moo.pm

Your companion for Continuous Integration

$ curl -sL https://git.io/cpm | sudo perl - install -g App::cpx
$ cpx hr -s 40

In GitHub Actions, it would give something like this:

name : Test cpx
on: push
jobs:
  cpx:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: Install cpx
        run: curl -sL https://git.io/cpm | sudo perl - install -g App::cpx
      - name: cpx hr 
        run: cpx hr -s 40

And see the result:

Conclusion

As of now, the code for this small utility is ridiculously simple (source), but sometimes good ideas (yes, all glory to myself 😀) are simple to implement.