mdbook-cmdrun

This is a preprocessor for the rust-lang mdbook project. This allows to run arbitrary (shell) commands and include the output of these commands within the markdown file.

Getting started

cargo install mdbook-cmdrun

You also have to activate the preprocessor, put this in your book.toml file:

[preprocessor.cmdrun]

How to

Let's say we have these two files:

Markdown file: file.md

# Title

<!-- cmdrun seq 1 10 -->

<!-- cmdrun python3 script.py -->

Python file: script.py

def main():
    print("## Generated subtitle")
    print("  This comes from the script.py file")
    print("  Since I'm at in a scripting language,")
    print("  I can compute whatever I want")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

The preprocessor will call seq then python3, and will produce the resulting file:

# Title

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

## Generated subtitle
  This comes from the script.py file
  Since I'm at in a scripting language,
  I can compute whatever I want

Details

When the pattern <!-- cmdrun $1 -->\n is encountered, the command $1 will be run using the shell sh like this: sh -c $1. Also the working directory is the directory where the pattern was found (not root). The command invoked must take no inputs (stdin is not used), but a list of command lines arguments and must produce output in stdout, stderr is ignored.

WARNING: This method only works with any system that has a shell sh that rust can find. Windows is not supported for now, see here for more.

Examples

The following is valid:

<!-- cmdrun python3 generate_table.py -->

```rust
<!-- cmdrun cat program.rs -->
```

```diff
<!-- cmdrun diff a.rs b.rs -->
```

```console
<!-- cmdrun ls -l . -->
```

Some more examples are implemented, and are used as regression tests. You can find them here. At the moment of writing, there are examples using:

• Shell
• Bash script
• Python3
• Rust

Current version: 0.5.0
License: MIT