Local Task Mode

The abt command runs project-specific App Builder definitions, providing per-directory CLI utilities without installing a machine-wide command. It is not a general build pipeline tool - it focuses on wrapping project-specific operational commands.

Development projects often require utility commands to update dependencies, serve documentation in preview mode, run tests, or build custom binaries. abt wraps these tools into a single project-specific CLI.

$ abt
usage: abt [<flags>] <command> [<args> ...]

App Builder Task

Help: https://choria-io.github.io/appbuilder

Commands:
  help [<command>...]
  dependencies
    update [<flags>]
  test [<dir>]
  docs
    serve [<flags>]
  build
    binary [<flags>]
    snapshot

Running abt in different directories produces different commands based on the task file found in each project. The full capabilities of the core App Builder definitions are available. The only difference from standard mode is how definitions and configurations are located.

App Definition Locations

The abt command searches from the current directory upward until it finds one of these files:

• ABTaskFile.dist.yaml
• ABTaskFile.dist.yml
• ABTaskFile.yaml
• ABTaskFile.yml
• ABTaskFile

A project can ship a default task file and users can provide local overrides.

Since version 0.14.0, the environment variable ABTaskFile=/some/file.yaml can be set to run a specific file without searching local directories.

Task files often need to run commands relative to the task file location. The exec command provides template variables and a dir property to handle this regardless of the working directory:

• {{ UserWorkingDir }} - the directory the user ran the command in
• {{ AppDir }} or {{ TaskDir }} - the directory the task file is located in

An example can be found in the source repository.

Configuration

Configuration is read from the .abtenv file in the local directory. Parent directories are not searched for this file.