1bm: single binary manager

1bm is a single (1) binary application manager. It installs, updates, uninstalls single binary applications (SBAs), just like a package manager would do to packages.

Due to limitations of Cargo, the crate is named onebm.

Install and use

install

$ mkdir -p ~/.local/1bm/bin
$ curl -O ~/.local/1bm/bin/1bm -sSL https://github.com/1bm/1bm/releases/latest/download/1bm-{linux,macos,windows.exe}
$ echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.local/1bm/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.config/fish/config.fish; source ~/.config/fish/config.fish
$ 1bm i https://github.com/1bm/1bm/raw/master/1bm.1bmdist

An installer is intentionally not provided because literally four lines won’t cost you much time.

The download links are redirected to GitHub releases. You can as well download them from there manually.

use

# download dist file and install application with default binary name
$ 1bm i https://github.com/some/app/raw/master/app.1bmdist
# install application with custom binary name (also local identifier)
$ 1bm i -n someapp https://github.com/some/app/raw/master/app.1bmdist
# list binaries intalled through 1bm
$ 1bm ls
# update all installed applications
$ 1bm up
# update specified applications
$ 1bm up 1bm someapp
# uninstall applications
$ 1bm rm someapp

That’s it. 1bm doesn’t attempt to do more than that.

uninstall 1bm

$ rm -rf ~/.local/1bm
# Then remove the PATH line from your shell startup script. I don't know a one-liner to do that.

For developers generating dist files and signatures, please refer to Dist files and signatures.

Why?

Nowadays, many CLI applications are built in a way so that they’re delivered as a single binary, without depending on shared libraries. Also notably, AppImage is an attempt at doing so for GUI applications.

Using a full-blown software package manager, packages are often managed by people other than application authors, resulting in outdated versions or even abandoned packages.

How about using the package manager of the programming language the application is written in? First, language package managers, despite being called "package managers" just like software package managers, are used to manage source code packages (libraries), not binaries; second, the user has to install an additional piece of software they may otherwise make no use of.

Many authors now utilize public CI/CD services to deliver their applications; it’s often trivial to download the binaries from such services.

Thus, it’s reasonable to have an "application manager" for SBAs.

How?

SBA author signs their binaries, and distributes an 1bm dist(ribution) file (JSON, ending with ".1bmdist"), which contains metadata like the signing key, default binary name, and where to download the newest binary.
To install an application, you feed the dist file to 1bm, which then downloads the binary, verifies it with the key, and puts it into its binary store.
On upgrading an application, 1bm goes over the download - verify - store process.
On uninstalling, the installed binary is simply deleted. (actually there’s a little bit bookkeeping)
If the "update URL" is 404, 1bm tells the user they should check for a new dist file.

Security?

Indeed, running pre-built binaries poses some security concerns. But unless you are hardcore enough to audit and build yourself all - I mean ALL - software you use, including the operating system, you are running things you don’t 100% know.

It’s always about trust. And you already trust the application author, or you won’t use what they built in the first place.

Plus, the binaries are signed.

Dist files and signatures

Dist files are JSON files with an ".1bmdist" extension. Fields of the JSON:

signing_key string Signing public key.
binary_name string Default binary name.
download_url string Different depending on download_type, see below.
download_type string
- ghr Download through GitHub releases, always the latest release. Has following additional fields (on top level). The github_asset_regex_* fields may be omitted if no binary is built for certain platform.
  - download_url string GitHub repo slug, e.g. bnoctis/1bm.
  - github_asset_regex_linux string regular expression to match asset name for Linux.
  - github_asset_regex_macos string regular expression to match asset name for macOS.
  - github_asset_regex_windows string regular expression to match asset name for Windows.
- url Direct URL download, no version check.
  - download_url string Download URL.

Signatures are generated with minisign. signing_key above is the public key.

Signatures are expected to be placed alongside the binary, named SIGNED_FILE.minisig, e.g. 1bm.minisig if the binary is 1bm, which is the default behavior of minisign.