shelf

Version 0.1. Subject to change in backwards-incompatible ways.

Cat's Eye Technologies' shelf is "a package installer which neither packages nor installs". It aims to be a replacement for toolshelf, implemented as a set of Bourne shell functions.

Quick Start

Download the file shelf.sh and put it somewhere, say $HOME/shelf.sh.

Or better, clone this repo as $HOME/.shelf; then the file shelf.sh will be at $HOME/.shelf/shelf.sh, and you can pull the latest changes with cd $HOME/.shelf && git pull origin master.

Then add these four lines to the end of your shell startup script (.bashrc, .bash_profile, or whatever):

. $HOME/.shelf/shelf.sh
export SHELF_FARMBASE=$HOME/.local                   # see below
export SHELF_PATH=$HOME/checkout1:$HOME/checkout2    # see below
shelf_init

Then start a new shell for it to take effect.

SHELF_FARMBASE is the directory where the link farms will be created. On some OSes $HOME/.local has a similar purpose, so it can be used here too. (Although note, the wisdom of doing that has not been fully vetted.)

SHELF_PATH should be a colon-separated list of directories where you will be keeping the source directories you wish to manage using shelf.

Usage

The following shell functions are defined by shelf.sh and available for use:

• shelf_link DIR [DIR ...]

  Create links to the relevant files in DIR, in the appropriate link farm. One or more DIRs may be given.

• shelf_unlink DIR [DIR ...]

  Remove, from all link farms, any links to any files found in DIR. One or more DIRs may be given.

• shelf_unlink_broken

  Remove, from all link farms, any links that are broken.

• shelf_build DIR

  Make a best-effort guess at how to build the sources in DIR, and try to build them using that method.

• shelf_pwd NAME

  Print out the full path of the first directory on SHELF_PATH with name NAME, if one exists, else print nothing and return an error code 1.

• shelf_cd NAME

  Change directory to the first directory on SHELF_PATH with name NAME, if one exists, else display an error message and return an error code 1.

• shelf_which NAME

  Essentially the same as which but, if the found file is a symbolic link, display the filename that the link points to as well.

Environment variables

• SHELF_VERBOSE

  If this environment variable is set to any non-empty value, the shelf_* functions will produce verbose messages on standard output about what they are doing, which can be useful for troubleshooting.

• SHELF_DRYRUN

  If this environment variable is set to any non-empty value, the shelf_* functions will not make significant changes to the state of the filesystem (for example, running commands like ln and rm) and instead will only report that such changes would be made.