bkn

Pronounced as Bacon. An attempt to create a simplified Make and Makefile for running commands.

This is a simple program that allows you to run commands from a YAML file. This is useful for running commands that you run often but don't want to remember the syntax for, especially in pipelines.

Binary Requirements

• AMD64 Linux

Binary Installation

1. CD to the bin directory.
2. Run ./bkn from this directory or copy the bkn binary and the bkn.yaml to another directory.
3. Update the bkn.yaml file with your commands.

By default bkn reads bkn.yaml from the current working directory. Use -c / --config (see Flags) to point it at a YAML file in another location instead of copying one next to the binary.

Flags

Flag	Description
-c, --config <path>	Path to the YAML file to load. Defaults to bkn.yaml in the current working directory.
-h, --help	Print colored usage info and the list of available commands, then exit.

Both short and long forms accept the standard Go-flag spellings: -c path, -c=path, --config path, and --config=path all work.

Examples:

# Run the `hello` command from a YAML file in another directory
bkn -c /etc/bkn/team.yaml hello

# Forward args to the underlying shell command (positional args after the command name)
bkn --config ~/dotfiles/bkn.yaml greet Ed

# Show help with the command list
bkn --help

Note: because flag parsing uses Go's standard flag package, -c / -h are consumed wherever they appear on the command line. If you need to forward a literal -c or -h to your shell command, quote it or rename the conflicting argument.

Building from Source

1. Install Golang
2. Clone the repo
3. CD to the repo directory
4. Run go build -o bin/bkn ./cmd/bkn
5. Run go test ./... to execute the test suite

YAML File

The YAML file is used to define the commands that you want to run. The file should be named bkn.yaml and should be in the same directory as the bkn binary.

Example:

include:  # Optional. Include other YAML files to keep your commands organized.
  - /path/to/other/file.yaml

commands:
  - name: list  # The name of the command
    description: List the contents of the directory.  # The description of the command
    command: |- # The command to run. The |- allows for multiline commands in a YAML file
      ls -lah "$@"

  - name: listening
    description: List all programs listening on a given port
    command: |-
      ss -tupln | grep LISTEN

Passing Variables

Any arguments after the command name are forwarded to the shell as positional parameters, just like a bash script. Reference them in your YAML command with $1, $2, $3, …, or use $@ to expand all of them.

For example, given the list command above:

• ./bkn list runs ls -lah with no arguments.
• ./bkn list /tmp runs ls -lah /tmp.
• ./bkn list /tmp /var runs ls -lah /tmp /var.

You can also pull individual positions, e.g. command: echo "first=$1 second=$2".

Attributes

• Bacon icons created by Freepik - Flaticon