The std TUI

There's one final thing we have gained from our work so far. The std framework ships with a binary that adds a terminal user interface (TUI) to our project. The quickest way to experiment with it is to enter a nix-shell with the package installed:

nix shell github:divnix/std

With the std binary now available, we can open the TUI with:

std

For our example repository, we're met with:

What we're seeing here is a graphical view of our project. In this case, we have a single binary located at //example/apps/default which can be run. How does std know this? Recall that we informed std that we have runnables located in apps.nix. When std analyzes our repository, it automatically found the runnable for our example Rust project and is showing us what we can do with it (i.e., run it).

This may seem trivial, but that's only because our repository is small. The usefulness of the TUI grows in proportion to the size of our project. As we add more and more pieces to it, the TUI begins to become an entry point for contributors to explore our repository.

In addition to the TUI, the std binary has a CLI counterpart that will show the structure of the repository:

$ std list
//example/apps/default:run    --    An example Rust binary which greets the user:  exec this target

If we wanted to run our binary, we'd use:

std //example/apps/default:run