bashreqs

pipreqs for bash scripts. Not affiliated with pipreqs. Requires Python version 3.5.3 to build.

bashreqs reads a bash script, and finds which programs the bash script needs to run. It then finds which packages would need to be installed to satisfy all of those dependencies. This creates a list of dependencies which can be used to install on another computer.

After cloning, run pip3 install -r requirements.txt then python3 bashreqs.py path-to-bash-script to generate a report containing all of the Debian and Ubuntu-based packages needed to run a bash script. If the executables are not packages, then bashreqs will just list the path to the executable.

Requirements

Needs apt-get, aptitude, nm, and python3 to be installed.

How to use

Run python3 bashreqs.py <path-to-bash-script> to generate a pip-style report of the bash script's requirements.

bashreqs assumes that the script runs fine on your computer before it searches for packages (this app should be run on the developer's computer to generate the dependency requirements.) bashreqs will notify you if the bash program contains a package which is obsolete (i.e. cannot be re-installed on another computer, because it was installed from a deb file, or is no longer available in the official repos.)

Here's a report generated from https://github.com/topkecleon/telegram-bot-bash/blob/master/bashbot.sh (not affiliated with telegram-bot-bash):

# warning: /usr/bin/tmux calls execv, execvp, execl which could cause missing req
# warning: /usr/bin/git calls execv, execvp, execl, execlp, execl which could cause missing req
coreutils==8.26-3 # because of /bin/rm, /bin/cat, /usr/bin/wc, /usr/bin/mkfifo, /usr/bin/cut, /usr/bin/tail, /bin/echo
curl==7.52.1-5+deb9u3
git==1:2.11.0-3+deb9u2
grep==2.27-2 # because of /bin/egrep,
less==481-2.1
ncurses-bin==6.0+20161126-1+deb9u1 # because of /usr/bin/clear
sed==4.4-1
tmux==2.3-4

bashreqs generates warnings for executables which contain a system call that could instantiate another program. This means that the command-line arguments to a program (e.g. strace <command>) might supervise another executable, or just a string (in which case bashreq may not be able to sufficiently determine the requirements.) For example, strace echo hello has two requirements: strace and echo, but bashreq only sees strace, and so generates a warning because strace's executable contains an exec call (allowing it to run arbitrary programs, such as echo.)

Report too bloated? Want to hide common utils like echo, bash, and sed for example?

No problem. bashreqs lets you hide the top x% of packages installed on Ubuntu computers. For example, ncurses-base is installed on 99.877% of computers (from the popcon data), so it's highly unlikely that a user will need to install it, as they probably already have it installed.

Dependency-free executable

Head on over to https://github.com/Decagon/bashreqs/releases/tag/v0.1-alpha to find a Linux executable which is dependency-less (except for the shell commands which are probably pre-installed.) No Python needed.

Roadmap

• using the flagged executables (warnings), check if they have the ability to call another program (e.g. strace can supervise another executable) so that requirements can be parsed more accurately.

• attempt to find dependencies inside of an executable that is not managed with a package manager

• add support for other package managers (e.g. rpm, yum, etc.)