Every web application I work with has this idea of a "run" script[0], basically a self isolated shell script to help automate running certain commands. Sort of

Every web application I work with has this idea of a "run" script[0], basically a self isolated shell script to help automate running certain commands. Sort of like a Makefile except with the full power of your shell. For example: https://github.com/nickjj/docker-flask-example/blob/main/run https://github.com/nickjj/docker-flask-example/blob/main/run In a bigger project this file tends to grow quite large, even when you have the power of a programming language available to you there's plenty of tasks where it makes sense to keep it as a shell script. Now imagine you work on a team where other folks want to contribute new functionality, it's important to have automated tools to help stick with a consistent style, just like you would want to use Black with Python. The run script for my infrastructure repo at one place I work for is almost 1,500 lines of shell scripting that's broken up into many small functions. It's not a big jumbled mess either, it's very organized and optimized to make running long commands faster and less error prone (even if they happen to be called in CI). These functions are mostly calling out to Terraform and other tools too, it's not 1,500 lines because of long winded cloud CLI tool API calls or anything like that. [0]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/replacing-make-with-a-shell-script-for-running-your-projects-tasks https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/replacing-make-with-a-shell-s...