See Project on Github

The first thing you might be thinking is what does msu stand for? It stands for my shell utilities. I started the project as a library of functions and constants that I could re-use when writing bash scripts. This went on until I realized that I had to keep writing out the structure of the scripts.

Is it a framework? Yeah! Using the core and ecosystem of msu, you can write a bash script faster. You write it as a module and msu takes care of checking the dependencies and running it. You get to re-use common functions in any of your modules without having to copy-paste them. Yes, it is a small Shell framework.

What are the benefits?

  • use other developers’ modules; do not re-invent the wheel
  • common functions can be re-used freely, without copy-paste!
  • these common functions can be developed and tested independently

show me how it works

Install msu:

⇒ wget -qO- http://git.io/vTE0s | bash

Install the module Submarine for some submarines:

⇒ msu install gh:GochoMugo/submarine

Write a module, my-module.sh, to install a node module from npmjs.org globally*, i.e. ${HOME}/node_modules is simple:

msu_require console         # internal module for logging to console
msu_require submarine.npm   # external module for submarines :-)

# install the module fancily
function install() {
  log "install module globally"         # `log` is from module `console`
  g ${1}         # `g` is from module `submarine.npm`. It installs node modules globally
  log "done!!!"
}

Install this module into msu:

⇒ msu install my-module.sh

Running this function, does not even require you to make the script executable, you simply run:

⇒ msu run my-module.install "express"

conclusion

msu might prove useful to programmers, especially sysadmins. It is a sword, yes!, but not so shiny yet. The project is on Github and would really love to get contributions and more ideas.

This is my first-ever blog post, any tips on improvement would be awesome!

Happy coding!