It's just one of those days...
I want to create a shell script (naive version could be a simple alias), but I want to make it the good way from the bottom up. Writing script itself isn't a problem at all, but since it's possible a couple of other people would like to use this script as well I want to make it accessible and maintainable as well. That's why I have two questions:
Are there any guides regarding structure of the repository with shell script inside? I mean, some conventions that, for example, we put a script in some directory, manpage, should I split it into multiple files etc.
How to make this script be accessible to other people? I know that if we want to install command line tool, we move it to /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin, but what with docs or some dependencies?
There are a lot of tutorials regarding writing command line tools in Ruby or Python with some templates how to manage everything, but I haven't found anything about writing a command line tool as a shell script.
In general, you would follow the conventions in man hier for the distribution. A shell script would be treated the same as a binary file.
Related
I want to create some bash scripts. They're actually going to be build scripts for Scala, so I'm going to identify them with my own .bld extension. They will be a sort of sub type of a shell script. Hence I want them to be easily recognised as a shell script. Should I call them
ProjectA.bld.sh //or
ProjectA.sh.bld
Edit: My natural inclination would be to go for the former but .tar.gz files seem to follow the latter naming convention.
A shell script doesn't mind what you call it.
It just needs to be..
executable (chmod +x)
in your path
contain a "shebang" as it's first line #!/bin/sh
The shebang determines which program is used to execute your script.
Call it ProjectA.bld.sh (or preferably buildProjectA.sh).
The .sh extension (although not necessary for the script to run) will allow you and everyone else to easily recognise it as a shell script.
While for the most part, naming conventions like this don't really matter at all to Unix/Linux, the usual convention is for the "extensions" to be in the order of the steps used to create the file. So, for example, a file named foo.tar.bz2.gpg.part01 would indicate a sequence of operations like the following:
Use tar to create foo.tar, which contains some other files
Use bzip2 to compress foo.tar into foo.tar.bz2
Use gnupg to encrypt foo.tar.bz2 into foo.tar.bz2.gpg
Use split or something similar to break the file into chunks for transmission/storage, resulting in one or more foo.tar.bz2.gpg.part* files.
The naming conventions are mostly just for human semantic meaning, though, and there's nothing stopping you from doing exactly the opposite, or even something completely random, except your own ability to remember exactly what you did...
this is just for learning purpose. (don't consider inotify)
what if we want to develop a bash shell script which compare file list of previous run and current run, when ever we run the script manually and email file name file size time of new files only.
The best that I can suggest is to find the tools that you need to do you specific work.
e.g. ls -l combined with awk, use mail or any other mailing tool, etc.
The idea is to use standard tools to accomplish your mission.
Don't compile your own code, just use standard tools in your script. Most of the things that you need are already there.
We have put together a perl script that essentially looks at the argument that is being passed to it checks if is creating or modifying a file then it saves that in a mysql database so that it is easily accessible later. Here is the interesting part, how do I make this perl script run before all of the commands typed in the terminal. I need to make this dummy proof so people don't forget to run it.
Sorry I didn't formulate this question properly. What I want to do is prepend to each command such that each command will run like so "./run.pl ls" for example. That way I can track file changes if the command is mv or it creates an out file for example. The script pretty much takes care of that but I just don't know how to run it seamlessly to the user.
I am running ubuntu server with the bash terminal.
Thanks
If I understood correctly you need to execute a function before running every command, something similar to preexec and precmd in zsh.
Unfortunately bash doesn't have a native support for this but you can do it using DEBUG trap.
Here is a sample code applying this method.
This page also provide some useful information.
You can modify the ~/.bashrc file and launch your script there. Do note that each user would (and should) still have the privelege to modify this file, potentially removing the script invocation.
The /etc/bash.bashrc file is system-wide and only changeable by root.
These .bashrcs are executed when a new instance of bash is created (e.g. new terminal).
It is not the same as sh, the system shell, that is dash on Ubuntu systems.
I've made a small script in my machine, and an alias in .bashrc that calls it. It's a bash script with 3 lines, but it can grow.
Now, some people in my team found it useful, and want to use it.
Instead of saying "copy this alias, do this, do that, install that lib" I was thinking about creating a simple package to be a little more professional. Fact is, I've never done something like this before. And the problem to me is not creating a package, is trying to decide what usually do you put in a package.
Suppose I want to take my script, and create myapplication. I want to create a .deb file that my team would install and:
Have a /usr/bin/myapplication or /usr/sbin/myapplication (what's the difference between them?), so they would just call myapplication at their terminal and it would work;
Have a man page; (Where are usually located man pages in a debian system?);
Have a possibility to read a .myapplicationrc in home folder with some configurations;
Have an entry for shortcuts in a gnome installation (is it possible to have an universal shortcut "format" that's is available to KDE and Gnome as well?);
Install dependencies.
I'm new to all that stuff. I usually code simple scripts and create an alias in my bashrc. I've never done a package before. Which guides do you know of that can help me accomplish what I thinking of above?
Here is a place to start, though I welcome a more succinct answer.
I couldn't find a complete guide. I think the best thing to do is download a package that does exactly what I'm thinking of and do some reading, like taskwarrior.
I have some directories with a number of "hidden" files. One example of this is I'm in a source controlled sandbox and some of the files have not been checked out yet.
When I hit TAB, I'd like the option of seeing these files.
A similar question has been asked before: CVS Tab completion for modules under linux
The answers to that question summarize to: "Ubuntu's got that built in".
I don't have the option of switching to Ubuntu, but surely I can use the same mechanisms.
how can I hook into the TAB-completion feature of tcsh to add additional file Support for CVS, SVN and BitKeeper would all be useful.
More important than support for a specific source control system is the ability to control the returned list myself.
An acceptable solution would also be to use a key-binding other than TAB. (ctrl- perhaps)
From the manpage:
the complete builtin command can be used to tell the shell how to complete words other than filenames, commands and variables
might get you started
I do not know how to program in tcsh. But if you can, then you could look at the file named "bash_completion" from the archive (find the download link here.)
On line 1673 begins CVS completion code - and this might be portable to csh if you are familiar with the differences between bash/tcsh.
On my ubuntu machine, there is also a section for SVN completion (in /etc/bash_completion) that doesn't seem to be present in the maintainer's archive.
That's not Ubuntu-specific behavior, it's the bash-completion project.
You could use that, if you can switch from tcsh to bash.