Sapling

Sapling is an extended Arch Linux base installation. It runs using its own multi-language library called Saplib, which provides useful commandline functions and scripting libraries.

About

Much like "vanilla" Arch Linux, it is by default a base system, customizable to suit many different use cases: be it a headless server, low-power-footprint laptop or a high end workstation.

Sapling is designed with commandline-usage in mind, albeit extending the traditional Linux experience. With carefully customized versions of tried-and-true utilities or modern reimplementations of them, it provides system-wide integration of, among others:

• the fish shell (as the default interactive shell)
• the bat pager utility
• the exa file discovery utility
• fast commandline navigation using fzf
• a custom, full IDE-like flavor of the neovim text editor

❕ fish is the default login shell in Sapling, but bash and zsh are also fully supported and Saplib implements the same useful functions/aliases for all three shells.

Installation

❗ Sapling sets default configurations for many core system settings, the root user and the above-mentioned applications on a system-wide scale. Although it should work on existing systems, it is intended for building your system around it. Installation should occur after bootstrapping your arch linux installation, and before creating any non-root users.

Simply run the Makefile as the root user:

    git clone https://github.com/ulinja/sapling.git
    cd sapling
    make install

You must reboot the system for all changes to take effect (as Sapling sets some defaults in different global environment files).

Saplib

Saplib is a custom library for multiple scripting languages, with system administration and shell scripting in mind. It provides interactive shell aliases for bash, zsh and fish. Library functions for use in scripting are also provided for all the above.

Sapling sets global default configurations for:

• the root shell, new user's shells
• new user's home directory structure (/etc/skel). Customizable before installation.
• default applications and shell behaviour
• bash
• zsh
• fish
• neovim

Dependencies

All dependencies which get installed alongside Saplib are listed at the top of the Makefile. Note that texlive-most is quite heavy in terms of disk space (2 GB), and completely optional: feel free to remove it from NVIM_PACMAN_DEPS in the Makefile prior to installation.

Updating

Clone/Pull the latest Sapling master and run make update.

Uninstallation

❗ An uninstallation script is not implemented and likely never will be.

Additional Information / Hacking

BASH

Saplib's bash scripts are stored in /usr/local/lib/saplib/bash/src. aliases.sh and prompt.sh are sourced directly in /etc/bash.bashrc, as they are only needed when bash is running interactively.

All other saplib bash scripts define functions for importing and using in bash scripts. A wrapper script is used to source them all at once. A global environment variable pointing to the wrapper script is set in /etc/environment, called $SAPLIB_BASH. This allows calling source $SAPLIB_BASH in any shell scripts in which you want to make use of saplib's bash functions.

FISH

Saplib's fish scripts are stored under /usr/local/lib/saplib/fish/src and globally sourced by a symlink inside /etc/fish/conf.d pointing at the wrapper script /usr/local/lib/saplib/fish/saplib.fish, which loads all of saplib's fish functions. See the fish documentation for more information.

Saplib also comes with some 3rd Party fish plugins, licensed under LGPLv3. (Currently just this one)

PYTHON

Saplib python is not yet implemented. Installation of the saplib python library will be handled via simple pip installation.

Roadmap

• A python library
• Desktop presets through Ansible playbooks