Managing my shell setup
Apologies for not being perl enough in this post .. my working environment is key to me being able to get anything done so I figure it’s a grey area I’m allowed to wander into.
Something I’ve battled with for a long time is how best to manage my bash setup and aliases.
For far too long I’d been copying a .bashrc or .bash_aliases file onto each
new box I’m working on, comment out a few parts, fix a few parts, …
As I started having accounts on more machines the lack of scalability soon bacame very apparent.
Luckily (for me) I’m more than happy to steal-and-adapt ideas that other people have already thought of.
bashrc.d/
The concept I’ve stolen is the /etc/*.d/ pattern. If you’ve seen one of these
directories you won’t be too shocked by the following explanation of my
setup.
The gist of my setup is to have a small snippet of code and a directory of useful (turn-offable) snippets.
The Small Code Snippet
I add the following to my .bashrc if it’s missing:
if [ -d $HOME/.bashrc.d ]; then
for x in $HOME/.bashrc.d/* ; do
test -f "$x" || continue
test -x "$x" || continue
. "$x"
done
fi
Snippet Directory
I make sure I have a directory: $HOME/.bashrc.d/
I fill it with small scripts that cover one or two features, and chmod +x
the scripts that I want to have ‘turned on’.
Here’s an example directory listing:
00.home-bin
bash-completion
common
git-aliases
git-color
git-persona
git-prompt
perl6
perlbrew
perlbrew-install
README.bashrc
Some examples
I’m sure you’re all happy with the directory listing and don’t need me to spoon-feed you bash setup commands but I’m still going to!
00.home-bin
This one has a strange name because it’s one of the few cases where order
matters; some later snippets call $HOME/bin scripts.
#!bash
# add my own bin to my path
if [ -d ${HOME}/bin ]; then
PATH=${HOME}/bin:${PATH}
fi
perlbrew
In the same vein as home-bin, I also want to use my perlbrew - if I have it.
#!bash
if [ -f $HOME/perl5/perlbrew/etc/bashrc ]; then
source $HOME/perl5/perlbrew/etc/bashrc
fi
git-aliases
I don’t spend all of my time adding paths and environment settings, I also want to minimise the amount of times I type something like
git my-custom-thingy
and see:
git: 'my-custom-thingy' is not a git command. See 'git --help'.
so I have another snippet that runs and makes sure my git aliases are all injected correctly:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
if [ `which git` -a ! -f $HOME/.bashrcd.gitalias.lock ]; then
# we don't want to be running this multiple times concurrently
date > $HOME/.bashrcd.gitalias.lock;
# add aliases
git config --global alias.st status
git config --global alias.ci commit
git config --global alias.br branch
git config --global alias.co checkout
# etc
# and cleanup
rm $HOME/.bashrcd.gitalias.lock;
fi
How does it help?
It probably looks like there’s still a lot of manual copy-paste required to install this on a new machine.
This is where git comes in!
Once you’re happy enough with your set-up:
cd $HOME/.bashrc.d/
git init
git add .
git commit -m 'Initial commit'
then add the remote of your choice and git push your hard work there.
Now a new machine setup is just:
git clone git://server/bashrcd $HOME/.bashrc.d
and adding the small code snippet to your .bashrc
I still have to manually copy something?!
No, of course not!
In your .bashrc.d/ folder create snippet.SOURCE.
Paste the snippet into it.
DO NOT make it executable!
Now you can do the following after your git clone:
cat $HOME/.bashrd.d/snippet.SOURCE >> $HOME/.bashrc
source $HOME/.bashrc
Where’s the git repo?
I said I had a remote repo. I’m sure you’re wondering where it is.
It’s on github … unfortunately it’s a private repo because I haven’t separated out the $employer specific setup. Sorry!
