Mage

Mage is a make-like build tool using Go. You write plain-old go functions, and Mage automatically uses them as Makefile-like runnable targets.

When to Use

• •Creating build scripts for Go projects.
• •Automating tasks (install, build, clean, release).
• •Managing dependencies between tasks.

Core Concepts

1. Magefiles

• •Any Go file with //go:build mage (or +build mage for older Go).
• •Usually named magefile.go or placed in magefiles/ directory.
• •package main.

2. Targets

• •Exported functions with specific signatures:
• •func Target()
• •func Target() error
• •func Target(ctx context.Context) error
• •First sentence of doc comment is the short description (mage -l).

3. Dependencies

• •Use mg.Deps(Func) to declare dependencies.
• •Dependencies run exactly once per execution.
• •mg.Deps runs in parallel; mg.SerialDeps runs serially.

Quick Start

To create a new magefile: mage -init

Common Tasks

Running Commands: Use github.com/magefile/mage/sh for shell execution.

import "github.com/magefile/mage/sh"
// ...
err := sh.Run("go", "build", "./...")

Clean Up:

import "github.com/magefile/mage/sh"
// ...
sh.Rm("bin")

References

• •Way Conventions: See references/way-style.md for Way-specific patterns and helpers.
• •API Documentation: See references/api.md for mg, sh, and target package details.
• •Examples: See references/examples.md for common patterns.