No generated code in the build path

This is the position I am least willing to give up. A build tool should not put code in your repository that you then have to keep in sync with the tool's version. Dagger works hard to hide it and it is still there: authoring a module writes dagger.gen.go and a tree of typed bindings next to your code, and the docs recommend committing them. Autotools has worked this way for decades: configure.ac becomes configure becomes a Makefile, generated code producing generated code producing the thing that runs. It is impressive, and when it breaks you need every layer in your head at once.

Marking generated files is right, and magus does it for its own output. The objection is about who did the generating. In magus I declared that output, in a target I wrote, and the tool does what I declared. A tool that writes a file into my tree as a condition of working, and tells me to commit it, has put itself between me and the build.

So the line: no generated code sits between you and running a build. A magusfile is Buzz, and magus interprets it. Nothing compiles it, nothing binds it, and no file lands in your tree that you keep synchronized with a tool version. magus init scaffolds a magusfile once and never touches it again. Scaffolding hands you a file and leaves. A generator that runs as a condition of the tool working never leaves.

Enforced by

• A magusfile is interpreted; there is no compile or bind step for it.
• magus init writes its files once; nothing else in magus writes into a workspace except a target the workspace declared.
• Every generated file in this repository is a declared output of a target, and the drift gate fails a hand edit of one.

Good

A generated file this repository owns, declared by the target that writes it:

export fun index_generate(ctx: magus\Context, args: [str]) > void !> any {
    ctx.writesFiles("MAGUS.md");
    ctx.readsFiles("magusfile.buzz", "../magus.yaml", "../internal/render/target_graph.go",
                   "../internal/render/md/md.go", "../internal/hint/cli_command.go");
    index\render("docs");
}

Bad

$ dagger init --sdk=go
$ git status
  new file: dagger.gen.go
  new file: internal/dagger/dagger.gen.go

The tool wrote code you must commit and regenerate on every tool upgrade, and a version mismatch between that code and the engine is now your build failure.

See also

• Sit next to the tools, never in front of them
• Behavior is code, facts are data
• Generated files