EsoRex is the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Recipe Execution Tool. It can list, configure and execute CPL-based recipes from the command line.

The Common Pipeline Library (CPL) comprises a set of ISO-C libraries that provide a comprehensive, efficient and robust software toolkit. It forms a basis for the creation of automated astronomical data-reduction tasks.

One of the features provided by the CPL is the ability to create data-reduction algorithms that run as plugins (dynamic libraries). These are called "recipes" and are one of the main aspects of the CPL data-reduction development environment.