bob-quick-start

To quickly get started, clone our sample Hello World project:

git clone git@github.com:benchkram/bob-quick-start.git
cd bob-quick-start 

Inside bob-quick-start, you'll notice a bob.yaml file. This file, also called Bobfile contains the instructions for all the build tasks of your project:

build:
  build:
    input: |-
      main.go
      go.mod
      go.sum
    cmd: go build -o ./build/server main.go
    target: /build/server
dependencies:
  - go_1_18

Running bob build will build the entire project from scratch:

bob build

Building nix dependencies...
Succeeded building nix dependencies
Running task build with 0 dependencies

build      	running task...
build      	...done

● ● ● ●
Ran 1 tasks in 330ms 
  build              	✔       	(330ms)

The first thing you might have noticed is that you didn't have to install Go for this application to work. bob takes care of installing all your project dependencies by using Nix under the hood. Nix has over 80 000 packages to pick from so you no longer need to rely on Docker containers to manage your environment.

The second thing to notice is that the binary for our server has been built inside ./build directory. You can now run it:

./build/server 

If you go to http://localhost:3333/ you should see Hello World!.

If you run bob build again, now it's much faster because bob will cache the build outputs. If the first build took 330ms now the second build only took 1ms.

$ bob build     
Building nix dependencies...
Succeeded building nix dependencies
Running task build with 0 dependencies

● ● ● ●
Ran 1 tasks in 1 ms
  build              	cached  

Let's change the main.go file from "Hello, World!" to "Hello, Bob!":

func Hello(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
  fmt.Fprint(w, "Hello, Bob!")
}

Now when we run bob build again, we see the project is built again because main.go has changed:

Building nix dependencies...
Succeeded building nix dependencies
Running task build with 0 dependencies

build      	running task...
build      	...done

● ● ● ●
Ran 1 tasks in 341 ms
  build              	✔       	(340ms)

bob figured out that the source code has changed and rebuilt out binary server.