Glob goal

@goal [ goal_name ] @glob <glob pattern> [ @except <except pattern> ] [ @private ]

This one is easy to illustrate with an example:

@goal process_file @glob '*.txt' 
 echo $ITEM $INDEX $TOTAL

Is equivalent to declaring three goals

@goal [email protected] @private
 echo a.txt 0 2

@goal [email protected] @private
 echo b.txt 1 2
 
@goal process_file
@depends_on [email protected]   
@depends_on [email protected]   

iff

$ ls
a.txt b.txt

For convenience, you can omit name in case of glob goal:

@goal @glob '*.txt'
 echo $ITEM $INDEX $TOTAL

as equivalent for

@goal a.txt @private
 echo a.txt 0 2

@goal b.txt @private
 echo b.txt 1 2
 
@goal '*.txt'
@depends_on a.txt 
@depends_on b.txt 

So essentially, one glob goal declaration expands to multiple goal declarations based on files present in a project that match the glob pattern. Shell glob expansion mechanism applies.

The useful use case here would be to represent a set of test files as a set of goals. The example could be found in the project's own build file.

Why may this be useful? Imagine in your Node.js application you have test1.js, test2.js, test3.js. Now you can use this Makesurefile

@goal @glob 'test*.js'
  echo "running test file $INDEX out of $TOTAL ..."
  node $ITEM

to be able to run each test individually (./makesure test2.js for example) and all together (./makesure 'test*.js').

In case if you need to glob the files with spaces in their names, please check the naming rules section below.

@except modifier can be useful to exclude some files from the @glob coverage. Example:

@goal process @glob '*.txt' @except '*_processed.txt'
  echo "processing $ITEM..."
  mv "$ITEM" "${ITEM%.txt}_processed.txt"