Castor is a DX oriented task runner and command launcher built with PHP.

It can be seen as a replacement of Makefile, Fabric, Invoke, Shell scripts...

It comes with many helpers to make your life easier:

• Seamless parsing of arguments and options, simplifying input handling
• Autocomplete support for faster and error-free command entry
• Effortless process execution, enabling seamless integration with external tools
• Parallel processing capabilities to maximize resource utilization
• Intelligent file watching that automatically triggers actions on file modifications
• Customizable notifications to keep you informed and in control
• Robust logging for capturing and analyzing essential information
• A strong emphasis on exceptional Developer Experience (DX)

Note Castor is still in early development, and the API is not stable yet. Even if it not likely to change, it is still possible that it will change in the future.

As an example, you could create a command that prints "Hello from castor" by creating a file castor.php with the following content:

<?php

namespace greetings;

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

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

Then you can run the command with castor greetings:hello:

$ castor greetings:hello
Hello from castor

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

#[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 browse the examples directory.

Note Castor requires PHP >= 8.1 to run.

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

You can also download the latest version by browsing the build page and selecting the last build.

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" -Lso $HOME/.local/bin/castor && chmod u+x $HOME/.local/bin/castor

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

Discover more by reading the docs:

• Installation and Autocomplete
• Basic Usage
• The run() Function
• Command Arguments
• Using the Context
• Asking Something, Progress Bar, Cache, Finder, Filesystem, .env, and more
• Watching Files
• Parallel Processing
• Notification
• Log and Debug
• SSH and remote servers
• Handling signals

Castor is a task runner, so it's primary goal is to run simple tasks to simplify the project development. Usually, it is used to run Docker commands, database migrations, cache clearing, etc.

Usually, tasks are very small, like 1 or 2 lines of code. So you probably don't want to waste your project with ops command that are not strictly related to the business.

Castor means "beaver" in french. It's an animal building stuff. And this is what this tool does: it helps you build stuff 😁