Tutorial

Basics

Panini is very similiar to make. The configuration file is in the INI format. Every section is a command that can be called with panini cmd

; Write this to the file `pan.ini`

[hello]
cmd=printf "hello world\n"

$ panini hello
hello world

One difference to make is that there are different section types. Here is an examle using the section type called venv.

[cowsay]
venv=pycowsay
cmd=pycowsay {}

$ panini pycowsay huh?
 ______
< huh? >
 ------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||

Note how {} got replaced with the trailing arguments.

That looks magical at first but with the builtin command getcmd we can inspect what is actually happening there.

$ panini getcmd cowsay huh?
uv run --no-project --with pycowsay -- cowsay 'huh?'

All the section types do is to generate the actual command that is going to be executed, based on the users input. You can see all currently supported section types here.

Section Type Declaration

Consult here how section types are defined

The via key

Every section type supports the via key, which can be used to chain commands.

[ssh]
cmd=ssh root@server {}

[nix]
nix=uv
via=ssh

[uv]
cmd=uv {}
via=nix

[myscript]
cmd=run myscript.py {}
via=uv

Calling panini myscript would run:

ssh root@server nix-shell --packages uv --run 'uv run myscript.py'

The env key

The env key is easy to explain.

[envtest]
cmd=printenv FOO
env=
  FOO=123

leads to:

$ panini envtest
123
$ panini getcmd envtest
env FOO=123 printenv FOO

Conclusion

• Every INI section is a command
• Section types are really just templates to build the command