This package provides a script wrapper that searches for scripts in a :-separated list of directories and runs the first match.

It is useful in situations where multiple people share a repository of scripts. Because scripts don't need to be compiled and installed, and because each user or contributor may have the repository stored at a different location on their system, it is useful to simply define the location of scripts in an environment variable. This also allows procedures to be shared which are copy-paste-executable by referring to a command line with this wrapper and the name of the script to run with its options.

Without cloning the repository, you can just download and install the script:

curl --silent --show-error -o /usr/bin/rs https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jbuhacoff/posix-run-script/master/src/main/script/rs.sh
chmod 755 /usr/bin/rs

If you have make, do this:

make install

If you don't have make, do this instead:

cp src/main/script/rs.sh /usr/bin/rs
chmod 755 /usr/bin/rs

You can create your own script directory and initialize your terminal with RS_PATH each time you login:

mkdir -p /etc/profile.d
cat >/etc/profile.d/rs_path.sh <<EOF
#!/bin/sh
export RS_PATH=~/script
EOF

User A has a script folder at ~/scripts, with RS_PATH=~/scripts in the user's environment. User B has a clone of the same script folder at /usr/share/scripts and a second script folder at ~/dev/newscripts, with RS_PATH=~/dev/newscripts:/usr/share/scripts in the user's environment.

If the shared script folder contains a script project1/doit.sh then both users could copy-paste-execute a line from a procedure document like this:

rs project1/doit [options...]

All path components in script names are relative to the directory in the search paths, giving flexibility to organize and namespace the scripts within a repository.

Furthermore, the script name is not required to include the extension and the script files do not need to have the executable bit set.

To customize the search path, export RS_PATH with a :-separated list of directories to search:

export RS_PATH=/path/to/scripts1:/path/to/scripts2

The directories will be searched in the order specified in RS_PATH and the first match will be used.

If it seems the wrong library or the wrong version of a library is being loaded, you can check it with the --locate or -l option on the command line:

rs --locate <script>
rs -l <script>

It will print out the path wherever <script> is found and exit 0, or it will print an error message to stderr and exit with a non-zero status.

You can execte a script on a remote server using the --connect or --connect-env options. The --connect option requires a parameter that specifies how to connect to the remote server, for example ssh user@host. The --connect-env option looks for an environment variable RS_CONNECT to find the same information so you can define it once instead of on each command.

For the following examples to work, the script must be found in the local RS_PATH and you must have SSH access to the remote server:

rs --connect 'ssh user@host' script/to/run
rs -c 'ssh user@host' script/to/run

export RS_CONNECT='ssh user@host'
rs --connect-env script/to/run
rs -C script/to/run

The script is piped to the remote system using the specified connect command and executed on the remote system.