Often, in order to improve my performance, I create custom aliases or commands in Bash. Most of the commands are local-only, what means that I don't need them outside of certain directory. Server connection scripts, deployment strategies, shortcuts for project-specific commands. I could keep them in project repository, but often these are my custom improvements, which could be not appreciated by my team mates. That's why local_bin was born. It allows to create directory-specific commands living outside of the directory.
$ cd projects/whoah
$ localbin edit suite
#!/bin/bash
. ~/.bashrc &>/dev/null
rvm use $(rvm current) &>/dev/null
rake db:migrate db:test:prepare && \
bundle exec rspec spec && \
bundle exec cucumber
$ suite
# stuff gets done
$ cd ..
$ suite
-bash: suite: command not found
Let's assume that in order to run full test suite of your app, you need to perform few steps, specific to your local machine only, and after that type a long command. You could automate this and squash into one script living somewhere and an alias in your .bashrc. But you can do better:
cd your/project/dir
localbin edit testall
It will open your default editor with empty file. Type your script there.
It might happen that some commands you want to execute, require your .bashrc. Don't bother to type . ~/.bashrc &>/dev/null at the beginning of your script.
When you save the script, it will appear immediately available in your console, but only for directory, which localbin edit was called from.
And this is basically it. You could also see all available commands for current working directory:
localbin edit
installation is pretty easy, you just need to clone the repo:
git clone git://github.com/sevos/local_bin.git ~/.local_bin
After that, include local_bin at end of your .bashrc:
. ~/.local_bin/local_bin.sh
Once you've done that, quit your terminal and run it again. Done!
It is important to include local_bin after your prompt customizations, because it overrides $PROMPT_COMMAND environment variable and needs to know, whether you use it as well to call your prompt command as well.
By default local bin stores all custom commands under directory structure laying at ~/.local_bin. You can override it, by exporting $LOCAL_BIN_DIR variable before including local_bin in your .bashrc:
export LOCAL_BIN_DIR=~/.dotfiles/local_bin
. ~/.local_bin/local_bin.sh
You can set environment variable LOCAL_BIN_RECURSIVE=1, and in your path will
land all commands available for upper directories. It means that in /home/projects/abc
directory you'll have available commands defined for:
/home/projects/abc/home/projects/home/
Commands defined in deeper directory override commands defined in higher directory.
When this option is turned on, you can define commands in / as global aliases
for your shell!
Pull requests and feature requests are welcome!