hello-dagger/README.md

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## Hello Dagger
An example repo demonstrating [Dagger](https://dagger.io).
### What is Dagger?
Dagger is not a CI/CD Runner like GitHub Actions or Gitlab CI. It is an
abstraction that uses and composes containers to run commands. Think of it as
somewhere between `just`, `nix`, and writing custom programs for your build
plus containers all over the place.
It exists as a cli tool which either starts a Dagger Engine locally or connects
to an existing one (in the cloud). This engine runs as a container and runs all
tasks inside the engine as a container as well. The cli tool communicates via
GraphQL with the engine.
Besides the TUI, Dagger Cloud is a commercial offering that is basically a
fancy add-on. It provides web-visualizations of errors during a dagger
execution and of performance metrics (profiling), as well as some caching
features.
The TUI and engine are published under the Apache 2 License and thus can be
used free of charge.
Besides using containers, Dagger's main selling point is the ability to program
tasks in high level languages like Go or Typescript instead of configuring them
in json or yaml. Dagger provides a DSL-like API that reminds one of
`Dockerfile` commands + FP (even though it isn't). Combined with the ecosystem
of the base language nearly anything can be coded and containerized fairly
easy.
### Walkthrough
This repo uses `mise` / `asdf` for setup, see `.tool-versions`.
Initialize the existing repo with dagger:
```shell
dagger init --sdk=typescript --source=./dagger
```
Typescript is just one option to write the config in, Python and Go are also
currently available with more to follow.
> Note: For some reason it wants to create a `LICENSE` file...
> LSPs should work properly out of the box as the dagger config is located in
> the `./dagger` directory. When using TS this is a self-sufficient node/yarn
> project.
To get an overview of available functions to call:
```shell
dagger functions
```
Run a function:
```shell
dagger call build --source=.
```
This runs the `build` function defined in `dagger/src/index.ts` and passes `.`
as the `source` parameter of that function.
> Camel Case function names in the TS setup are available in Kebab Case on the
> shell (same applies for Go and Python). This does not only apply to your own
> declared functions but to all functions available on the returned data types.
>
> ```typescript
> this.build(source).asService().up({ ports: "8080:8080" });
> ```
>
> becomes
>
> ```shell
> dagger call build --source=. as-service up --ports=8080:8080
> ```
> After running a dagger command the Dagger Engine stays alive as a local
> container waiting for the next call.