multitool

Multitool is a general-purpose command-line interface with plugins support.

Why does this exist?

I built this tool so that I can quickly create and distribute command-line tools for consulting work and personal use.

The plugins manager uses git to manage plugins installed from remote git repositories.

Usage

Usage: multitool [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  Welcome to the Multitool command-line interface!

  PyPI:   https://pypi.org/project/multitool/
  GitHub: https://github.com/mdelotavo/multitool

Options:
  -V, --version  Show the version and exit.
  -h, --help     Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  plugins  Simple plugins manager for distributing commands.

Managing plugins

The simple plugins manager uses git to install commands from remote sources, thus you will need to have git installed for the installation of plugins to work.

If git is unavailable on your machine, then the plugins commands will be unavailable.

However, it is possible to manually install plugins by dragging them under its own directory: ~/.multitool/plugins/PLUGIN_NAME/.

The tool revolves around the use of the click package to create command plugins which can be dynamically loaded into the multitool command-line at runtime.

Currently, only the commands shown below are supported. More commands will be added to improve automation and user experience.

The steps below show how to install commands from a public plugins repository.

Configuring

To configure remote sources for installing plugins, run:

multitool plugins configure -a

This will open a text editor so that you can specify the remote sources.

If you don't want changes to be automatically applied, then you can drop the -a option.

When the editor opens, copy and paste the following example configuration:

[sources]
public = https://github.com/mdelotavo/multitool-plugins.git

After saving the changes, the CLI will attempt to install the plugins from the specified Git URI. Here we use the HTTPS URI but you can also use SSH if you have configured it.

You can also specify multiple sources, as long as the key (public in this case) is unique. The key will be the name of the repository on your local machine under ~/.multitool/plugins/.

If installation is successful, you should now see additional commands when you run multitool -h

Quickstart

You can run the following commands to install the example plugins:

echo -e '[sources]\npublic = https://github.com/mdelotavo/multitool-plugins.git' >> ~/.multitool/plugins/config
multitool plugins update
multitool plugins show
multitool plugins show -n public
multitool plugins show -n public --show-commit-only
multitool plugins show -n public --show-dependencies-only
pip3 install $(multitool plugins show -n public --show-dependencies-only)
multitool examples -h

Updating

If you specified the -a option when running multitool plugins configure then install will occur automatically. Otherwise you can run:

multitool plugins update

This will install and update plugins.

Pruning

If you specified the -a option when running multitool plugins configure then the removal of plugins will occur automatically. Otherwise you can run:

multitool plugins prune

Showing

To show the plugins you have configured, run:

multitool plugins show

You can also run the following commands if you specify the plugin name:

multitool plugins show -n PLUGIN_NAME --show-commit-only
multitool plugins show -n PLUGIN_NAME --show-dependencies-only

Some plugins will not load if dependencies are not installed. You can run the following command to install them. In order for this to work, the plugin needs to have the Requires key in the JSON body of the multitool-info.json file.

pip3 install $(multitool plugins show -n PLUGIN_NAME --show-dependencies-only)