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Testing beast

Once you have installed Beast on your system (see Installation), you are now ready to get started with Beast.

This tutorial will give you a basic overview of how to start using beast with the help of a basic beast build file. So let's get cracking:

  1. Follow the steps provided in Installation to install Beast on your system. Once ready, run beast -h to see the help section for using beast CLI. If no errors occurred, you are ready to use beast.

  2. Create an empty folder named beast-test using the command: mkdir beast-test and navigate to this directory using the command: cd beast-test.

    We will run our test in this directory

  3. Create an empty file named beast.build. This will be our beast build file. Here we will define how we want to build our project. For now, populate the beast build file like this:

    build B : A
    ! echo "Building B after A!!!"
    build A :
    ! echo "Building A!!!"
    build C : A
    ! echo "Building C after A!!!"
    use tabs

    Remember to use tabs inside the build rules when giving commands, and not just spaces. Copying and pasting build file content from above might convert tabs to spaces. Make sure to replace those spaces with a tab indent.

  4. Now run beast command. This will execute the commands you provided in the above file in a suitable order. The output would be something like this:

    beast: Building rule A
    Building A!!!
    beast: Building rule B
    Building B after A!!!
    beast: Building rule C
    Building C after A!!!

You defined 3 targets above, A, B and C. All of them have been built. You are ready to get started!!!