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setup-da-distro

A framework to manage installation of binary programs from web sources for non-root users on Linux systems

The repo is a fork of https://github.com/pylipp/sdd with a few major changes:

  • Simpler project structure. Scripts in the repo are standalone with common helpers
  • Support multiple architectures (x86-64, i686, arm, aarch64, or any)
  • Extra helpers for fetching versions from GitHub, GitLab, and cgit, and for extracting archives
  • Extra apps available

Motivation

During occasional strolls on reddit or github, my attention is often drawn towards programs that increase productivity or provide an enhancement over others. (As a somewhat irrelevant side note - these programs mostly work in the command line.) Usually these programs are available for download as binary or script, meaning that naturally, the management (installation, upgrade, removal) of those programs has to be performed manually. At this point sdd comes into play: It provides a framework to automatize the tasks of managing the programs (or, in sdd terminology, 'apps'). The procedures to manage specific apps are defined within scripts in this repository (at apps/).

sdd enables me to keep track of my favorite programs, on different machines. I'm working towards having systems set up in a reproducible way on my machines. sdd helps me, since I might have different Linux distributions installed on these machine, with different package manager providing different versions of required programs (or none at all). I can freeze the versions of all apps managed by sdd with sdd list --installed > sdd_freeze.txt, and re-create them with xargs -a sdd_freeze.txt sdd install.

WARNINGS

sdd is a simple collection of bash scripts, not a mature package manager (neither do I aim to turn it into one...). Using it might break things on your system (e.g. overwrite existing program files).

When using sdd, you execute functionality to manipulate your system. Especially, you download programs from third parties, and install them on your system. Most sources are provided by GitHub releases pages. Keep in mind that repositories can be compromised, and malicious code placed inside; and sdd will still happily download it. (If you have an idea how to mitigate this security flaw, please open an issue.)

Installing older versions of available apps is supported but not guaranteed.

Installation

sdd requires a few dependencies:

  • bash
  • curl
  • unzip
  • awk or mawk or busybox
  • coreutils or busybox

Clone the git repository and let sdd install itself:

git clone https://github.com/SmartFinn/sdd
cd sdd
bash bin/sdd install sdd

or install sdd without git using the following command:

wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SmartFinn/sdd/master/bootstrap.sh | sh

Please verify that the $SDD_BIN_DIR ($HOME/.local/bin by default) is present in your PATH. You might want to append this to your shell configuration file:

export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

Same applies for the MANPATH:

export MANPATH="$HOME/.local/share/man:$MANPATH"

For enabling zsh completion functions (oh-my-zsh users: put this before the line that sources oh-my-zsh.sh since it calls compinit for setting up completions):

fpath=(~/.local/share/zsh/site-functions $fpath)

For enabling bash completion functions, you should be fine if you already use the bash-completion package. Otherwise add this snippet to your ~/.bashrc:

# source user completion directory definitions
for i in "${XDG_DATA_HOME:-$HOME/.local/share}/bash-completion/completions"/*; do
    [[ -f $i && -r $i ]] && . "$i"
done
unset i

Usage

Installing an app

Install an app to SDD_BIN_DIR (defaults to ~/.local/bin) with

sdd install <app>

You can specify a custom installation prefix like this:

SDD_BIN_DIR=~/bin sdd install <app>

or by exporting the SDD_BIN_DIR environment variable.

By default, sdd installs the latest version of the app available. You can specify a version for installation:

sdd install <app>=<version>

This command overwrites an existing installation of the app without additional conformation.

The format of the <version> specifier depends on the app that is managed (usually it's the tag of the release on GitHub).

Upgrading the installed apps

To upgrade the installed apps to the latest version available, run

sdd upgrade

If you want to upgrade an individual app, run

sdd install <app>

Internally, sdd executes un- and re-installation of the app for upgrading. The usage of SDD_BIN_DIR is the same as for the install command.

Uninstalling an app

To uninstall an app, run

sdd uninstall <app>

The usage of SDD_BIN_DIR is the same as for the install command.

Batch commands

The commands install and uninstall can take multiple arguments to manage apps, e.g.

sdd install <app1> <app2>=<version> <app3>

Listing app management information

List installed apps by running

sdd list [--installed]

List all apps available for management in sdd with

sdd list --available

List all installed apps that can be upgraded to a more recent version with

sdd list --upgradable

The list command options come in short forms, too: -i, -a, -u

General help

High-level program output during management is forwarded to the terminal. Output of the sdd_* functions of the app management file is in /tmp/sdd-<command>-<app>.stderr. For increased verbosity when running sdd, set the respective environment variable before invoking the program

SDD_VERBOSE=1 sdd install <app>

You can always consult

sdd --help

Customization

You can both

  • define app management files for apps that are not shipped with sdd, and
  • extend app management files for apps that are shipped with sdd.

The procedure in either case is:

  1. Create an empty bash file named after the app in ~/.config/sdd/apps (without .bash extension).
  2. Add the functions sdd_install, sdd_remove, and sdd_version with respective functionality.
  3. You're able to manage the app as described in the 'Usage' section. sdd tells you when it found a customization for the app specified on the command line.

Contributing

You're looking for managing an app but it's not included in sdd yet? Here's how contribute an app management script:

  1. Fork this repository.
  2. In your fork, create a feature branch.
  3. Clone existing app management file to new_name@arch in apps.
  4. Update sdd_version, sdd_install, and sdd_remove functions.
  5. Add the new files, commit, and push.
  6. Open a PR!

Related projects

Use case Tool
Managing Python packages (system-wide or user-specific) pip
Managing Python apps (system-wide or user-specific) pipx
Generate packages from Makefile and track installation by package manager CheckInstall
Declarative whole-system configuration; unprivileged package management GNU Guix
Creating packages of various formats fpm

Note that maintaining packages (deb, rpm, etc.) might still require root privileges, depending on your system.