Developing BPM Packages

Developing BPM packages is very fun and rewarding. They are very easy to program (if you know basic python), and quick to install.

BPM packages are, at its core, a zip file containing a txt file of command aliases (aliases.txt) and the script itself. This makes the creation of packages accessible to anyone, and makes debugging packaged scripts easy.

General Script Format

A script must be structured with several components. Must-includes are the main() function that must take specific arguments (see below), and a parser to parse those arguments. These are very easy to create and structure. Adaptation of existing scripts should be relatively simple.

`main()` Function

BUGPy script execution requires that a function called main() exist, and that it takes a list of arguments that are passed by the user when the script was executed. This function is the code that is going to be run when the program is started.

It must accept one argument in the form of an array. This array is the list of arguments passed by the user when the command is run (See "Arguments" for more information).

An example of a basic "Hello World" script would look like this:

def main(args)
    print("Hello World")

Note

If you are adapting a script, move everything from if __name__ == "__main__" to a new main(args) block.

Arguments

Arguments are anything additional a user adds to a script when it is executed. For example, if the user runs mv file.txt movie.mp4 code.py folder, everything after mv is an argument. Arguments are separated by spaces and passed as a single array of strings to the script's main() function. In the example, the arguments passed to the script is in the form ["file.txt", "movie.mp4", "code.py", "folder"]. If nothing was passed (e.g. only mv was run), the arguments passed would be [].

As a developer, a good idea is to make an if/else statement

from pathlib import Path
from . import color_print

def main(args):
    # Set the directory path
    script_dir = Path(__file__).resolve().parent
    dir_path = Path("")

    # Use the current script's directory or specify a path
    base_path = Path(__file__).resolve().parent
    if args == []:
        for entry in dir_path.iterdir():
            if entry.is_dir():
                color_print.cprint(f"[FOLDER] {entry.name}", "DARKBLUE")
            elif entry.is_file():
                print(f"[FILE]   {entry.name}")
        print()
    elif "--help" in args or "-h" in args:
        print("""
LIST FILES
Usage:
  list_files [flags]

Flags:
  -h: this help section

Notes:
  A program to list the folders and files in the current directory.
        """)
    else:
        print("list_files: Invalid arguments, try using none?")

Lets say you have this script called script.py and you want the user to type script1 or hellolol to launch it while in BUGPy.

You must first create an aliases.txt and fill it with the following content: