A modular framework for interactive bash plugin management without overcomplicating your .bashrc

You can install bics locally by running the following one-liner

bash <(curl -sS https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bahamas10/bics/master/bics) init

Running this again after bics is installed will upgrade bics to the latest version from GitHub.

After installing bics, add the following line to your .bashrc file

. ~/.bics/bics

...and then exec bash to load the plugins

$ exec bash
$ bics list
> test-plugin

As you can see, one plugin has been installed automatically, test-plugin. You can view its source with:

$ cat ~/.bics/plugins/test-plugin/*.bash
# add code here

This plugin doesn't do much, but it shows how to add plugins for use by bics.

bics will search ~/.bics/plugin/*/*.bash and source every file matching that glob

To get started, you can delete that plugin by running

bics remove test-plugin

...or achieve the same thing manually by running

rm -r ~/.bics/plugins/test-plugin

Now, when you list the installed plugins you'll see nothing

$ bics ls
$

Notice that ls is an alias for list

Plugins are installed to ~/.bics/plugins as directories that contain 1 or more .bash files. Let's install a simple plugin that is on GitHub.

To install this plugin we run:

$ bics install https://github.com/bahamas10/bash-cdstack
Cloning into 'bash-cdstack'...
remote: Counting objects: 8, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (6/6), done.
remote: Total 8 (delta 2), reused 8 (delta 2)
Unpacking objects: 100% (8/8), done.

This is a shorthand way of running:

cd ~/.bics/plugins && git clone https://github.com/bahamas10/bash-cdstack

And that's it! The plugin is installed, you can start using it by running:

exec bash

... to reload the bash environment

You can list installed plugins to see that cdstack is present

$ bics ls
> bash-cdstack

See Managing Plugins for more information about storing plugins in a dotfiles repository as submodules

Run the following to get help on the command line

$ bics help
usage: bics [command] [args...]
(v0.0.8)
...

You can also run bics help on any plugin to view it's documentation in your PAGER (defaults to less).

$ bics help bash-cdstack

This will open $PAGER on the README.md file in the repository. bics scans for files that look like documentation and opens the first one it finds, the order is:

{*.txt,*.md,readme,ReadMe,README}

So if you create a plugin and would like to include a help text specifically for the command line, create a .txt file

Here is a list of plugins Dave wrote for bics:

• bash-cdstack
• bash-analysis
• bash-dvorak
• bash-interactivity
• bash-path
• tabstop

Creating a plugin is meant to be simple and easy. At the core, a plugin needs to be a directory with 1 or more .bash files that will be sourced upon bash's execution. Take a look at the test-plugin directory that is created when bics is installed to see how a simple plugin looks.

Ideally, plugins will each have their own repository here on GitHub, and can be stored in a users dotfiles repository as git submodules.

An example real-world plugin can be seen here https://github.com/bahamas10/bash-cdstack

You can store your plugins as git submodules stored in a dotfiles repo. An example can be seen here, specifically the bics-plugins directory.

https://github.com/bahamas10/dotfiles

This commit shows an example git submodule added, and logic to install bics initially and symlink the plugins directory accordingly.

https://github.com/bahamas10/dotfiles/commit/50cd7a236069cf98eacf170b2d6629e814075fb8

NOTE: if you use this method, bics install and bics update will not work as expected, you'll need to manage the plugins manually with git.

bics tries not to clutter up your namespace or clobber variables in your shell. Below is a list of all variables/functions/aliases created by bics

• BICS_VERSION - the version of bics when it was sourced
• BICS_SOURCED - an array of relative filenames that were sourced by bics

example:

$ echo "$BICS_VERSION"
v0.0.5
$ printf '%s\n' "${BICS_SOURCED[@]}"
/home/dave/.bics/plugins/bash-analysis/analysis.bash
/home/dave/.bics/plugins/bash-cdstack/cdstack.bash
/home/dave/.bics/plugins/bash-dvorak/dvorak.bash

None.

• bics - aliased to ~/.bics/bics

• _bics - used for bash completion
• _ - anonymous function used (and cleared) by bics

A standard convention for plugins is to use _ as a throwaway function name to allow for local variables that don't clutter up the default namespace. A similar technique is used in JavaScript to create anonymous, self-executing functions to avoid creating global variables.

example

_() {
    local i=0
    local foo=bar
    echo "$foo" > "/tmp/something.$i"
}
_

In this example, i and foo are not made global. The only thing made global is the _ function

bics will unset _ (the function) after it has finished loading plugins

Provided for...

• bics

You can update all plugins, or a specific plugin by running

$ bics update [name]

If name is empty, all plugins are updated

You can update bics itself at anytime by running

$ bics self-upgrade
> getting source from https://githubusercontent.com/bahamas10/bics/raw/master/bics... done

bics doesn't require any external programs to source plugins that are already installed, however some of the extra features require various programs to be installed.

Required for bics install and bics update. The only operations done are git clone and git pull respectively.

Required for bics help and bics init to colorize output - will silently fail if not found.

Any code submitted should pass the syntax check:

$ make check
expand bics | awk 'length($0) > 80 { exit(1); }'
./bics -h | expand |  awk 'length($0) > 80 { exit(1); }'
shellcheck bics

Bash style guide: https://github.com/bahamas10/bash-style-guide

MIT License