Livebook as a 'LiveScript' for background jobs and automations

[dderooy]

It would be really cool if Livebook acted as a higher level abstraction on top of single file elixir scripts. Maybe call it 'LiveScript'.

CLI tooling:

instead of:
> elixir stand_alone_script.exs
could become:
livescript stand_alone_livebook.livemd
In the background the .livemd gets converted and ran as regular exs file with Mix.install/

As a Hex Package:

In addition to CLI, Livescript could be imported to an elixir project and then:
stdio_text = LiveScript.run("/path/to/script.livemd", [args])
Behind scenes this module uses the isolated runtime that powers elixir_standalones in livebook. This could pave the way for some interesting scripting apps.

Why?

This would allow .livemd files to be treated like any exs script for background job automations while maintaining all the front-end human readability + design / code ease. I am starting to think of Livebook as an Elixir IDE and it would be cool to treat .livemd as first class files.

[josevalim]

Somewhat related to #643.

[dderooy]

Nice script by @jonatanklosko. Ty for that!

I'm also exploring the hex package idea where you can call an isolated script (with its own mix.install) from an app runtime instead of cli.

[linjunpop]

Make a .livemd file run from CLI can also allow a test to be written for the Livebook? So we can use tests to check the correctness of a .livemd file.