Setuplinks

About

The Bash script setuplinks.sh creates a symbolic link for each line LINKNAME;TARGET;... of an input file.

The anticipated scenario involves a user who has some "global" folders synced with the cloud (e.g., I have ~/OneDrive, ~/Dropbox, and ~/GoogleDrive synced with the corresponding clouds by Insync) and wants to link multiple of their subfiles and subfolders in the local file system separately. For example, instead of remembering and running

     ln -s ~/OneDrive/dotfiles/bashrc ~/.bashrc
     ln -s ~/GoogleDrive/signature.svg ~/Pictures/signature.svg
     ln -s ~/Dropbox/shared/collaborators/paper1 ~/papers/paper1

each time the user sets up his file hierarchy, he creates a file setuplinks.csv that contains the lines

     # OneDrive
     ~/.bashrc;~/OneDrive/dotfiles/bashrc
     # GoogleDrive
     ~/Pictures/signature.svg;~/GoogleDrive/signature.svg
     # Dropbox
     ~/papers/paper1;~/Dropbox/shared/collaborators/paper1

and runs

setuplinks.sh setuplinks.csv

Note that each line of the input file which is meant to be ignored by the program must be prepended with #. The script offers various modes of interaction and a backup solution.

The following help is obtained by running setuplinks.sh -h.

Help

NAME:

setuplinks

SYNTAX:

setuplinks [-b|d|f|h|i|r|s|v|V] FILE

DESCRIPTION:

Creates a symbolink link LINKNAME->TARGET for each line of FILE in the form LINKNAME;TARGET. Only lines starting with # are ignored. By default, the interactive mode of ln is invoked (asks before replacement) and the progress is printed. The modifiers can be combined as -b -f -s (-bfs does not work).

MODIFIERS:

• -b Backup: If LINKNAME exists, it is moved to LINKNAME.bck (in the same folder).

• -d Dry run: Does not make any changes on files.

• -f Non-interactive mode of ln: If LINKNAME exists, it is replaced by the newly created symlink without any confirmation. If combined with -b, the backup LINKNAME.bck is created before the replacement.

• -h Prints this help and quits.

• -i Interactive mode: Requires confirmation before every file operation.

• -r Restore: If LINKNAME.bck exists, it is switched with LINKNAME.

• -s Silent mode: Does not print any progress.

• -v Prints the version and quits.

• -V Verbose mode: Prints out each file-command.

AUTHOR:

Pavel Hajek.

COPYRIGHT

MIT License © 2021 Pavel Hajek