Castor is a DX oriented task runner built in PHP featuring a range of functions for common task processing.

It can be viewed as an alternative to Makefile, Fabric, Invoke, Shell scripts, etc., but it leverages PHP's scripting capabilities and its extensive library ecosystem.

It comes with many features to make your life easier:

• Seamless parsing of arguments and options, simplifying input handling
• Autocomplete support for faster and error-free typing
• A built-in list of useful functions:
  • run(): Runs external processes, enabling seamless integration with external tools
  • parallel(): Parallelizes process execution to maximize resource utilization
  • watch(): Watches files and automatically triggers actions on file modifications
  • log(): Captures and analyzes essential information
  • And even more advanced functions

In Castor, tasks are set up as typical PHP functions marked with the #[AsTask()] attribute in a castor.php file.

These tasks can run any PHP code but also make use of various functions for standard operations that come pre-packaged with Castor.

For example:

<?php

namespace greetings;

use Castor\Attribute\AsTask;
use function Castor\run;

#[AsTask()]
function hello(): void
{
    run('echo "Hello from castor"');
}

Will expose a greetings:hello task that you can run with castor greetings:hello:

$ castor greetings:hello
Hello from castor

Then, you can go wild and create more complex tasks:

#[AsTask(description: 'Clean the infrastructure (remove container, volume, networks)')]
function destroy(bool $force = false)
{
    if (!$force) {
        io()->warning('This will permanently remove all containers, volumes, networks... created for this project.');
        io()->comment('You can use the --force option to avoid this confirmation.');

        if (!io()->confirm('Are you sure?', false)) {
            io()->comment('Aborted.');

            return;
        }
    }

    run('docker-compose down -v --remove-orphans --volumes --rmi=local');

    notify('The infrastructure has been destroyed.')
}

If you want to read more about usage, you can read the basic usage documentation, or watch some examples.

You can download the latest release of Castor as a phar file from the releases page.

We provide different phar for Unix/Windows architectures to offer lighter phar files. Download the correct one and make it available in your shell:

Example for Linux:

curl "https://github.com/jolicode/castor/releases/latest/download/castor.linux-amd64.phar" -Lfso $HOME/.local/bin/castor && \
    chmod u+x $HOME/.local/bin/castor && \
    castor --version || \
    (echo "Could not install castor. Is the target directory writeable?" && (exit 1))

There are other ways to install Castor, please refer to the documentation.

Discover more by reading the docs:

• Getting started with Castor
  • Installation and Autocomplete
  • Basic Usage
  • Executing Processes with run()
  • Task Arguments
  • Using the Context
• Going further with Castor
• Castor reference
• Examples
• Frequently asked questions