Manage several shell profiles and switch between them.
Because:
- We all need to manage our shell session by:
- We may require to change those specific settings according to a given environment (e.g., by working in several contexts/clients), and thus need to manage several shell environments, or profiles, in parallel
- The more different environments we have, the more complicated it is to maintain our shell profile files (
.bashrc,.bash_profile,.zshrc...) - We want to backup our shell session settings by focusing only on our own settings
- Manage different shell session settings, or profiles
- Unclutter shell session settings by modularizing the configuration and be able, for instance, to define 1 script file for 1 configuration/tool type and easily import or export them
- Apply a lexicographical order when discovering shell profiles' scripts
- Allow to define loading and unloading shell profile script types to handle transition between profiles
- Remember the current profile in use to be able to quickly reload it
shprofile manages a set of shell profiles which can be enabled at any time. Scripts are executed within the current shell session, so scripts can modify the current shell environment.
Each shell profile is defined by a set of scripts contained into and associated folder from the $HOME/.shprofile/profiles profiles root folder.
For instance:
$HOME/
.shprofile/
profiles/
myfirstprofile/
script1.sh
script2.sh
mysecondprofile/
script3.sh
script4.sh
defines two profiles, myfirstprofile and mysecondprofile, containing respectively the script1.sh, script2.sh and the script3.sh, script4.sh scripts.
Once profile is defined, it can be simply loaded via:
$ shprofile myfirstprofileand be easily switched by another one via:
$ shprofile mysecondprofileThe current loaded profile is kept in memory (more precisely written into a file) to be quickly reloaded if necessary. The reload of the current profile can be done by calling shprofile without a profile name.
Thus,
$ shprofilewill reload the current loaded profile.
Note that this feature can be useful if a specific configuration needs to be executed at any shell session openings. See further for more details.
Each script is a shell script and can be anything you want: exporting variables, setting the PATH, applying a complex initialization process... All scripts are executed within the current shell session.
The name of a script is important. Depending on its name, a script is executed differently.
Scripts are discovered by using the lexicographical order. Then, if you want to execute script1.sh before another one, a good practice is to use a numerical prefix in its name:
1-script1.sh
There are two types of scripts:
- Loading scripts (by default)
- Unloading scripts
A script is by default a loading script. That is: executed when a profile is loading.
But sometimes it may be necessary to run scripts during the transition to another profile. In this case, there are unloading scripts. An unloading script is suffixed by the keyword -unload:
script2-unload.sh
Of course, execution order and execution type can be combined.
Let's take an example:
$HOME/
.shprofile/
profiles/
myfirstprofile/
1-script1.sh
1-script1-unload.sh
script2.sh
script2-unload.sh
mysecondprofile/
script3.sh
script4.sh
In this scenario, the 1-script1-unload.sh script will be executed when leaving the myfirstprofile profile, and before executing the script2-unload.sh script.
Any dot file is ignored. So to disable execution of a script, just prefix it by the . character.
$ mkdir -p $HOME/.shprofile/profiles
$ curl -o $HOME/.shprofile/shprofile.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/abourdon/shprofile/4.8/shprofile.sh
$ alias shprofile='source $HOME/.shprofile/shprofile.sh'-
Now you can create your first profile by creating its associated folder within
$HOME/.shprofile/profiles:$ mkdir $HOME/.shprofile/profiles/myfirstprofile -
Add your desired scripts into it (some examples can be found here)
-
And finally enable it
$ shprofile myfirstprofile
A common use is to load the current profile at each shell session opening. Depending on your shell, this enabling can be done differently.
$ echo "alias shprofile='source $HOME/.shprofile/shprofile.sh'" >> $HOME/.bashrc
$ echo 'shprofile' >> $HOME/.bashrc$ echo "alias shprofile='source $HOME/.shprofile/shprofile.sh'" >> $HOME/.zshrc
$ echo 'shprofile' >> $HOME/.zshrc$ shprofile --helpSome examples of shell profile's scripts can be found here.
shprofile can be seen as a combined version of /etc/profile.d (because of its modular architecture) and .bash_profile (because focusing on a single user), by adding the ability to:
- define several profiles
- not being constrained to use a shell type specific user profile file (e.g.,
.bash_profileor.zprofile)
Some alternatives to shprofile could be:
Contributions are welcome :-) To do so, check out the instructions.
Copyright (c) 2021 Aurélien Bourdon
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