Create Executables, not Shell Aliases or Functions

I am a fan of making it my life easier and more efficient by using time-saving tools like command-line tooling to save the number of keystrokes I have to enter for common interactions..

For instance, as I use Gradle a lot, so find myself writing the following a lot:

./gradlew clean build
./gradlew spotlessApply
./gradlew spAp # the shorter alternative I actually use
./gradlew bootRun

I ended up writing a shell alias to simplify this, which allows me to instead invoke Gradle with g:

alias g=./gradlew

However, the crux of this post is that using an alias / function in your shell's language don't work outside of your shell.

For instance, if you want to try and make sure that all commits on a branch pass their tests, you may write:

$ git rebase origin/HEAD --exec 'g clean test'

But unfortunately, that will land you with the following error:

Executing: g
error: cannot run g: No such file or directory
warning: execution failed: g
You can fix the problem, and then run

  git rebase --continue

This is because Git is executing commands, without using your current terminal environment, meaning your customisations like alias / function won't be available.

The solution instead is to make sure that you create an executable file, for instance:

mkdir -p ~/bin
export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin
touch ~/bin/g
chmod +x ~/bin/g

Where the ~/bin/g script has the contents:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
./gradlew "$@"

I've currently got 17 helpers, for copy/pasting from the command-line, pretty-printing JWTs, JSON, etc, and it makes life a lot easier.

There are some aliases in my config that aren't yet migrated over - because I don't need them / use them enough to be useful as an executable script.