Scripts are anything executable; a bash script, perl script, ruby script, groovy script, etc. A script can even be a java jar file with a main method specified in its manifest. Ply resolves scripts through the following sequence:
-1- First check to see if it is an alias, if so expand it (see Aliases for more information). For each expanded value go back to -1-. If there is nothing to expand go to -2-.
-2- Then check for an executable script of the same name within the project's scripts directory (defined to be the value of a property named scripts.dir
within context project; see Properties for a general description of properties) This particular property defaults to scripts relative to the project directory (so if
your project is located at ~/projects/myproject its scripts directory would default to be ~/projects/myproject/scripts). If such a script is found, invoke it, otherwise try -3-.
-3- Check for an executable script of the same name within the ply scripts' directory $PLY_HOME/scripts. If found,
invoke it, otherwise, use it as an argument to the previous script.
For example; here is how ply resolves the following execution (assuming the default properties; i.e., you haven't re-aliased or added new scripts):
$ ply dep tree
Ply first looks up dep to see if it is an alias. It is, it is aliased as ply-dependency-manager-1.0.jar. It then checks to see if ply-dependency-manager-1.0.jar is itself an alias. It is not. So it then checks to see if ply-dependency-manager-1.0.jar is a script from with the local project's scripts directory. It is not so it checks to see if it is a script within the $PLY_HOME/scripts directory. It is. Ply then needs to resolve the next argument tree in case it is an argument to the script. It goes through the same process as it did for dep however tree is neither an alias nor is it a script in either the local scripts directory or the system scripts directory and so it is treated as an argument to the ply-dependency-manager-1.0.jar script.
You can also run shell scripts directly from ply. Shell scripts are those things which one could invoke natively from the shell/terminal; e.g., ls, grep or even ply itself. To invoke shell scripts from ply use tick-marks to surround the shell invocation (i.e., `ls -al`). These shell scripts can be aliased like any other script; e.g., print-directory=`ls -al`. When invoking directly from the shell itself, most shells will interpret the tick marks and execute the command eagerly, short-circuiting their execution by ply. To circumvent this, escape the tick marks appropriately for your shell. For instance in bash one can do this:
$ ply '`echo hello there`'
Properties Passed to Scripts
Each script invocation will be passed, via environmental variables, a set of resolved properties particular to the invocation. See the Properties section for a description of how properties are resolved and then passed to scripts.