Recipe: replace your shell scripts

Every small project has a scripts/release.sh. It started as three lines, grew a flag and two guards, and now nobody wants to touch it. This recipe replaces it with the $ shell from @zuke/core/shell — and nothing else. No build class, no targets: the smallest possible door into Zuke, and a script you run exactly as before.

The script you have

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

VERSION="${1:-}"
if [ -z "$VERSION" ]; then
  echo "usage: scripts/release.sh <version>" >&2
  exit 2
fi
if [ -n "$(git status --porcelain)" ]; then
  echo "release: the working tree is not clean" >&2
  exit 1
fi

deno test -A
git tag -a "v$VERSION" -m "Release $VERSION"
git push origin --follow-tags

It works, until a version string has a space in it, or someone copies it to a project without set -e, or the $(...) quoting is one level off.

The same script with $

#!/usr/bin/env -S deno run -A
import { $ } from "jsr:@zuke/core/shell";

const [version, flag] = Deno.args;
if (version === undefined) {
  console.error("usage: deno run -A scripts/release.ts <version> [--dry-run]");
  Deno.exit(2);
}

const dirty = await $`git status --porcelain`.quiet().text();
if (dirty !== "") throw new Error("release: the working tree is not clean");

await $`deno test -A`;

if (flag === "--dry-run") {
  console.log(`dry run: would tag v${version} and push`);
} else {
  await $`git tag -a ${`v${version}`} -m ${`Release ${version}`}`;
  await $`git push origin --follow-tags`;
}

deno run -A scripts/release.ts 1.1.0 --dry-run
deno run -A scripts/release.ts 1.1.0

What you gained

• No shell, so nothing to break out of. Every ${…} interpolation becomes one discrete argv entry; the process is spawned directly. A version with a space, a quote, or a ; in it is just a string — the bash script has to trust its quoting.
• A non-zero exit throws. set -e is not something you can forget, and the error names the command and its code. .noThrow() is the explicit opt-out, and .code() gives you the exit code as a number when that is what you want.
• Typed output. .text() is trimmed stdout, .lines() is a string[], and both replace $(...), IFS tricks and $?. .quiet() replaces > /dev/null 2>&1.
• The rest of TypeScript. Arrays expand to multiple arguments, a value can be validated before it is used, and the editor knows what $ returns. See the shell guide for .env(), .cwd(), .killAfter() and .spawn().

When to take the next step

The moment you have two scripts that share a step, give the steps names. The same routine as targets — each one runnable alone, visible in --list, and free to depend on the others:

import { Build, parameter, run, target } from "jsr:@zuke/core";
import { $ } from "jsr:@zuke/core/shell";
import { DenoTasks } from "jsr:@zuke/deno";
import { GitTasks } from "jsr:@zuke/git";

class Release extends Build {
  version = parameter("The version to release, e.g. 1.1.0").required();

  clean = target()
    .description("Refuse to release from a dirty working tree")
    .executes(async () => {
      // `$` still works inside a target, for the command that has no wrapper.
      const dirty = await $`git status --porcelain`.quiet().text();
      if (dirty !== "") throw new Error("the working tree is not clean");
    });

  test = target()
    .description("Run the tests")
    .dependsOn(this.clean)
    .executes(() => DenoTasks.test((s) => s.allowAll()));

  tag = target()
    .description("Create the annotated release tag")
    .dependsOn(this.test)
    .executes(() =>
      GitTasks.tag((s) =>
        s.name(`v${this.version.value}`)
          .message(`Release ${this.version.value}`)
      )
    );

  push = target()
    .description("Push the tag")
    .dependsOn(this.tag)
    .executes(() => GitTasks.push((s) => s.remote("origin").followTags()));
}

await run(Release);

./zuke tag --version 1.1.0   # clean → test → tag, and stop there
./zuke --list                # every step, with its description

The git steps moved from $ to the typed GitTasks wrapper, where the flags are methods and a typo is a compile error. ./zuke --list, graph, --parallel and ./zuke mcp come with the targets for free. All three versions of this script, side by side, are in examples/scripts-to-zuke.