shprofile - shell profile manager

Manage several shell profiles and switch between them.

Table of Contents

• Why?
• How?
  • Available features
  • Concepts
    • Shell profile
    • Shell profile memory
    • Structure of a script
    • Name of a script
  • Getting started
  • Need help?
• Difference with /etc/profile.d and alternatives
• Want to contribute?
• License

Why?

Because:

• We all need to manage our shell session by:
  • Setting the PATH or PS1 variable
  • Setting a proxy
  • Adding aliases
  • Writing a configuration file for a particular command (e.g. vim's .vimrc, screen's .screenrc)
  • Applying a mandatory initialization process for a particular command line (e.g. jenv, nvm or rbenv)
  • ... and so on
• We may require to change those specific settings according to a given environment (e.g., by working in several contexts/clients), and thus need to manage several shell environments, or profiles, in parallel
• The more different environments we have, the more complicated it is to maintain our shell profile files (.bashrc, .bash_profile, .zshrc...)
• We want to backup our shell session settings by focusing only on our own settings

How?

Available features

• Manage different shell session settings, or profiles
• Unclutter shell session settings by modularizing the configuration and be able, for instance, to define 1 script file for 1 configuration/tool type and easily import or export them
• Apply a lexicographical order when discovering shell profiles' scripts
• Allow to define loading and unloading shell profile script types to handle transition between profiles
• Remember the current profile in use to be able to quickly reload it

Concepts

shprofile manages a set of shell profiles which can be enabled at any time. Scripts are executed within the current shell session, so scripts can modify the current shell environment.

Shell profile

Each shell profile is defined by a set of scripts contained into and associated folder from the $HOME/.shprofile/profiles profiles root folder.

For instance:

$HOME/
    .shprofile/
        profiles/
            myfirstprofile/
                script1.sh
                script2.sh
            mysecondprofile/
                script3.sh
                script4.sh    

defines two profiles, myfirstprofile and mysecondprofile, containing respectively the script1.sh, script2.sh and the script3.sh, script4.sh scripts.

Once profile is defined, it can be simply loaded via:

$ shprofile myfirstprofile

and be easily switched by another one via:

$ shprofile mysecondprofile

Shell profile memory

The current loaded profile is kept in memory (more precisely written into a file) to be quickly reloaded if necessary. The reload of the current profile can be done by calling shprofile without a profile name.

Thus,

$ shprofile

will reload the current loaded profile.

Note that this feature can be useful if a specific configuration needs to be executed at any shell session openings. See further for more details.

Structure of a script

Each script is a shell script and can be anything you want: exporting variables, setting the PATH, applying a complex initialization process... All scripts are executed within the current shell session.

Name of a script

The name of a script is important. Depending on its name, a script is executed differently.

Execution order

Scripts are discovered by using the lexicographical order. Then, if you want to execute script1.sh before another one, a good practice is to use a numerical prefix in its name:

1-script1.sh

Execution type

There are two types of scripts:

• Loading scripts (by default)
• Unloading scripts

A script is by default a loading script. That is: executed when a profile is loading.

But sometimes it may be necessary to run scripts during the transition to another profile. In this case, there are unloading scripts. An unloading script is suffixed by the keyword -unload:

script2-unload.sh

Combine naming conventions

Of course, execution order and execution type can be combined.

Let's take an example:

$HOME/
    .shprofile/
        profiles/
            myfirstprofile/
                1-script1.sh
                1-script1-unload.sh
                script2.sh
                script2-unload.sh
            mysecondprofile/
                script3.sh
                script4.sh

In this scenario, the 1-script1-unload.sh script will be executed when leaving the myfirstprofile profile, and before executing the script2-unload.sh script.

Disable script execution

Any dot file is ignored. So to disable execution of a script, just prefix it by the . character.

Getting started

1. Install it

$ mkdir -p $HOME/.shprofile/profiles
$ curl -o $HOME/.shprofile/shprofile.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/abourdon/shprofile/4.8/shprofile.sh
$ alias shprofile='source $HOME/.shprofile/shprofile.sh'

2. Enable it

1. Now you can create your first profile by creating its associated folder within $HOME/.shprofile/profiles:

   $ mkdir $HOME/.shprofile/profiles/myfirstprofile

2. Add your desired scripts into it (some examples can be found here)

3. And finally enable it

   $ shprofile myfirstprofile

3. Bootstrap it

A common use is to load the current profile at each shell session opening. Depending on your shell, this enabling can be done differently.

Bash

$ echo "alias shprofile='source $HOME/.shprofile/shprofile.sh'" >> $HOME/.bashrc
$ echo 'shprofile' >> $HOME/.bashrc

Zsh

$ echo "alias shprofile='source $HOME/.shprofile/shprofile.sh'" >> $HOME/.zshrc
$ echo 'shprofile' >> $HOME/.zshrc

Need help?

$ shprofile --help

Examples of shell profile's scripts

Some examples of shell profile's scripts can be found here.

Difference with /etc/profile.d and alternatives

shprofile can be seen as a combined version of /etc/profile.d (because of its modular architecture) and .bash_profile (because focusing on a single user), by adding the ability to:

• define several profiles
• not being constrained to use a shell type specific user profile file (e.g., .bash_profile or .zprofile)

Some alternatives to shprofile could be:

• direnv
• use
• terminal-setup

Want to contribute?

Contributions are welcome :-) To do so, check out the instructions.

License

Copyright (c) 2021 Aurélien Bourdon

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.