The Bash-Utils command is a small library of utilities to quickly build robust and complete
Bash scripts.
It proposes a set of useful functions and environment variables in an enhanced environment with some system options enabled by default,
to let you build a script with user options and arguments, an automatic generation of some informational output about
the script's usage (version, help etc), a special handling of errors, stack trace and debugging, and some more features.
The library also embeds and proposes a set of modules you can use as-is ;
see the libexec/bash-utils-modules/ directory.
The library is licensed under an Apache 2.0 License and is fully "unit-tested" using BATS to keep it as robust as possible.
- handling of some common options with associated behaviors: verbose, quiet, force, help, version ...
- handling of errors with information about what throws it or where it was thrown
- some debugging information (enabled by default) with a stack trace in case of process or sub-processes errors
- generation of an automatic synopsis of the script based on declared available options (shorts and longs, with or without arguments)
- generation of some help and version strings for the script based on declared variables
- a set of commonly used functions about booleans, integers, strings, arrays and file system
To make the library accessible for all users, the best practice is to install it in a global path like /usr/local/bin/:
make install DESTDIR=/usr/local/bin
This way, any user can use it in its scripts by sourcing it:
source bash-utils
For a full download and installation from the command line, run:
wget --no-check-certificate https://github.com/e-picas/bash-utils/archive/master.tar.gz
tar -xvf master.tar.gz
cd bash-utils*
make install DESTDIR=/usr/local/bin
You can use the make command to clean-up an installed library or update it ; to get a full usage, run make.
To load the library, the best practice is to use it as your script's interpreter defining it as your shebang:
#!/usr/bin/env bash-utils
# write your script here
# ...
To let such notation work correctly, the bash-utils script must be accessible from your $PATH variable.
To check this, use: /usr/bin/env bash-utils --version.
If you prefer use a classic shebang, you just have to load the library by sourcing it:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
source bash-utils -- # keep the trailing double-dash to avoid parameter expansion
# write your script here
# ...
The library embeds a model module you can use as a more complex starter template:
bash-utils model bash-utils ~/bin/name-of-your-script
For a documentation of the library, please see the documentation manpage.
For a complete review of the library's usage, please see the usage manpage.
If you want to test the library locally, you need to install its binary in one of your $PATH directory
(it will be replaced if you finally install the library):
ln -s "$(pwd)/bin/bash-utils" /usr/local/bin/