Should we add standard scripts to /bin?

[colinleach]

From a PR that Erik just sent to the R track, I belatedly realized that new tracks get a bunch of useful scripts. These are in https://github.com/exercism/generic-track/tree/main/bin

• add-practice-exercise
• bootstrap
• fetch-configlet
• fetch-configlet.ps1
• verify-exercises
• verify-exercises-in-docker

Of these, Julia only has fetch-configlet.

My first impression is that at least add-practice-exercise and verify-exercises would be useful here, maybe the others.

Can anyone see a downside to this?

[depial]

On a related note, I thought it would be nice if we could get configlet to generate a runtests.jl which is scaffolded in something like the following way (here for an exercise named practice-exercise):

using Test

include("practice-exercise.jl")

@testset verbose = true "tests" begin

    # insert all tests here

end

This might cut down on confusion about the new format versus the blank file which is presented now.

[colinleach]

That looks simple and worthwhile. I'd support it.

Of course, a more thorough approach is to create generators to build the tests from problem-specifications. That has the advantage that tests can be kept up to date as canonical-data.json evolves, and the disadvantage that it's a LOT more work. As I discovered a few weeks ago, when I tried it.

[depial]

That looks simple and worthwhile. I'd support it.

I've only briefly looked into it, but I'm still not exactly sure where I'd need to start. I initially thought the bin folder would have the appropriate files, but there's also the generators file which seems to have some relevant code.

[colinleach]

I don't know details, but I think there was an attempt to add generators several years ago. It doesn't seem to have progressed very far.

[colinleach]

I thought it would be nice if we could get configlet to generate a runtests.jl

Thinking about this some more, we probably can't mess with configlet, which is a complicated cross-track Go program. I guess options included writing a separate shell script and putting it in bin, or writing a Julia script and creating a scripts directory. Some tracks have a .templates directory for things they want to copy into new exercises: that could be an easy solution. I've done something similar on private forks, but I never pushed anything like this to an Exercism track repo.

[colinleach]

I've not seen any pushback on the original question about adding scripts from generic-track. I'll wait till tomorrow or Saturday, then submit a PR.

A more clued-up maintainer might create a GitHub workflow to keep them synced automatically, but I confess I have no idea how to do that. I should probably learn, sometime.

[depial]

Thinking about this some more, we probably can't mess with configlet, which is a complicated cross-track Go program.

Thanks for looking into that! I'm unfamiliar with the overarching program (and don't read Go), but the .templates idea sounds closest to what I was hoping was possible. Creating the scripts directory also sounds potentially interesting though.

I've not seen any pushback on the original question about adding scripts from generic-track. I'll wait till tomorrow or Saturday, then submit a PR.

Sounds good! I'll try to be around to review when that comes in.

[colinleach]

Tangential comment: from the timing of this, you seem to be well to the east of me. I'm in Arizona, timezone UTC-7:00 all year (MST in US terminology).

[depial]

I'm not too far east (Georgia EST). I just got started early today :)

[colinleach]

Resolved with PR #785