Passing recipe parameters to dependency recipes

[nicholaschiasson]

I want to do something like this but am not sure if it is possible. From what I have read in the documentation, it seems like an unsupported case.

a *FLAGS:
  ...

# b depends on a and passes its input FLAGS to a
b *FLAGS: a
  ...

Is it possible to accomplish something like this? Where a recipe passes its parameters to its dependency recipe?

[casey]

Yup, this is possible:

a *FLAGS:
  ...

# b depends on a and passes its input FLAGS to a
b *FLAGS: (a FLAGS)
  ...

[zpah]

I have tried the suggested method in my justfile, but i found weird idiosyncrasy! :)

In this test case receipt "good" is successful, but simple wrapper receipt "expected_good" failed:

set positional-arguments

a *FLAGS:
  #!/usr/bin/env bash
  set -eux
  typeset -a argv=("$@")
  declare -p argv
  [[ ${1} == 'f1' ]]
  [[ ${2} == 'f2' ]]
  [[ ${3} == 'f3 "x y z"' ]]

b *FLAGS: (a FLAGS)

good: (a 'f1' 'f2' 'f3 "x y z"')

expected_good: (b 'f1' 'f2' 'f3 "x y z"')

Is it a just issue or my mistake?
If it is a just issue, what is the workaround?

[nicholaschiasson]

Interesting. I was playing with your example trying to make it work and couldn't. So something changes possibly about escaped strings when you pass args multiple recipes deep... 🤔

[laniakea64]

@zpah try this b? -

b *FLAGS:
  just -f {{quote(justfile())}} a "$@"

[nicholaschiasson]

May work but aside from being a bit more clunky, this isn't the same as depending on the other recipe. Nothing is stopping other recipes from running a redundantly, which matters for some workflows.

[zpah]

Thank you for response!
I agree with @nicholaschiasson, this is too fragile solution leading to errors.
It breaks, for example, when needs pass extra variable from command line:

$ just --set var1 '2' b

In nested just invocation, the new var1 value will not be visible.
Fixing will require further obfuscation of the code.

Issue resolved by extending the justfile syntax with the List type.
Receipt parameters are need considered as List in this case.