The issue gives important context for this, but basically nu needs some way for functions to accept raw arguments instead of parsed arguments. In the issue @kubouch suggested using extern with a block as syntax for this, as it hints at this only being necessary/allowed for passing to external commands

Codecov Report

Merging #8956 (fa36c58) into main (24b4ac6) will increase coverage by 0.36%.
The diff coverage is 90.90%.

@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##             main    #8956      +/-   ##
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+ Coverage   68.19%   68.56%   +0.36%     
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  Files         636      636              
  Lines      101752   101798      +46     
==========================================
+ Hits        69393    69795     +402     
+ Misses      32359    32003     -356     

Thanks for this. It's less code than I thought there would be. Nice job!

One question, does it really fix #7758? I'm not sure how this is going to change the OP's original problem with built-in commands.

I think it does solve the problem for calling external executables, like if you wanted to wrap rg with variable parameters, or something like that.

also tagging @kubouch who was thinking about this, too

Cool, I also expected more code. I would include a bit more test cases. Can you define other parameters (like extern foo [--bar: string, ...rest]) in the signature? What happens if you don't include ...rest? Does it work if you import the extern from a module?

@fdncred
One question, does it really fix #7758? I'm not sure how this is going to change the OP's original problem with built-in commands.

You're right that it doesn't really address the original issue, I will remove that from the description.

@kubouch
Can you define other parameters (like extern foo [--bar: string, ...rest]) in the signature? What happens if you don't include ...rest?

It doesn't allow other parameters, and it must include a rest parameter.

Does it work if you import the extern from a module?

Seems to work:

OK, sounds good, but I think the signature should support other parameters, just like def, otherwise I think it will be too limiting (e.g., you can't take your existing block-less extern definition and extend it by adding a block).

OK, sounds good, but I think the signature should support other parameters, just like def, otherwise I think it will be too limiting (e.g., you can't take your existing block-less extern definition and extend it by adding a block).

How do you think this should combine with raw options?

Every parameter not defined in the signature, instead of throwing an error, would be a string collected in $rest (mandatory parameter if you use extern with a block). So, a signature like this

extern foo [x:int, --bar: string, ...rest] { }

would define $x, $bar and $rest variables inside the block.

This shouldn't be very hard because commands defined with extern have "fall-through" signatures enabled by default, so the $rest contents should be in the call's argument list as a vec of Argument::Unknowns already.

Yea it seems everything works this way so this is even better

The failing check is due to problems with the github api

Yeah, the CI is flaky sometimes. Can you restart the job? I think there is an option for it somewhere, or you can force-push into the branch to force the reset.

EDIT: I managed to reset the job.

I don’t have permission to restart the job and I have nothing to push

you should be able to

• commit an empty commit
• close and reopen the PR

to force the CI to trigger 😏

thanks @pingiun, let's see how it goes 😋

Very cool!