coal

coal is an alias container manager for the shell. It provides a system to quickly add/remove shell aliases, isolate aliases into containers, and quickly switch between, create, and delete containers.

Motivation

The inspiration for this idea came from working on multiple projects at once - when juggling various tedious build commands, things can quickly get unwieldy. The natural solution? Introduce aliases in one's .bashrc (or dotfile of their choosing).

Why containers?

To avoid the mental overhead in coming up with unique aliases across contexts, a containerized solution was the most appealing.

Installation

Installing coal requires Cargo to be installed. Installation may take up to a minute

$ git clone git@github.com:pranavmk98/coal.git
$ cd coal
$ chmod +x setup.sh
$ ./setup.sh
Checking for cargo... complete!
Using source file: /home/<user>/.zshrc
Installing dependencies and binary... complete!
Setting up environment... complete!
Setting up source file... complete!
Setup complete. Restart your shell for the new changes to take effect.

Supported shells: bash, zsh, ksh

Usage

Create a new alias container called server:

$ coal new server

Add a new alias hw to run echo 'Hello, World':

$ coal add hw "echo 'Hello, World'"
$ hw
Hello, World

Create a fresh new container client with no aliases (and automatically switch to it):

$ coal new client

Show existing containers and the currently active one:

$ coal show
server
client*
$ hw
zsh: command not found: hw

Show existing aliases in the server container:

$ coal show server
hw -> "echo 'Hello world'"

Switch to the server container:

$ coal load server
$ coal show
server*
client
$ hw
Hello, World

Delete the client container:

$ coal delete client
$ coal show
server*

Remove the hw alias:

$ coal rem hw
$ hw
zsh: command not found: hw

Contributing

This project has been lightly tested on bash, zsh, and ksh. I've tried to make this tool as robust as possible, but if there's something I missed I'd love your help.

• Want a new feature? Feel free to file an issue for a feature request.
• Find a bug? Open an issue please, or even better send me a pull request.

Contributions are always welcome at any time!