someutils

Some CLI utilities written in Go.

• Mainly intended as Unix-like commands for Windows, but cross-platform anyway.

• Covers similar ground to coreutils, but not intended as a replacement. (Won't ever support all commands & options).

• Just because.

• WARNING: someutils isn't intended for use as a library YET. The API can and will change, with the idea being to facilitate cross-platform, shell-like scripting in Go.

• New and Experimental in v0.5: you can use someutils as a library (but the API will change)

  pipeline := someutils.NewPipeline(someutils.Wrap(wget.WgetToOut()), Head(2), Tr("h", "G")) invocation, out, errout := pipeline.InvokeReader(strings.NewReader("www.golang.org\n")) lastOrErrInvocation := invocation.Wait() fmt.Println(out.String())

Installation.

Method 1: download precompiled binaries (recommended for when you're not currently running go):

• Grab some recent (v0.3.0) Windows binaries zipped up for 32-bit Windows and 64-bit Windows.
• Just unzip somewhere on your %PATH% (environment variable).
• (These binaries were built and uploaded with goxc, ofcourse)

Method 2: go get all binaries into your GOPATH

NOTE: On Unix systems in particular, be careful that your system PATH elements come BEFORE GOPATH within your PATH environment variable

1. go get github.com/laher/someutils/./...
2. ls, pwd etc

You could also use go get to pick out a subset of those commands.

Method 3: just install the some command, (similar to busybox):

1. go get github.com/laher/someutils/cmd/some
2. some ls, some pwd etc
3. Optionally, use alias or doskey to make some behave more like busybox.

Scope etc

My initial target is to get my Windows CLI a bit closer to being as productive as my Linux CLI, by creating many small utilities under one umbrella. Then, who knows. I do like the idea of a Go/Linux, as opposed to Gnu/Linux :)

Some commands are not included, because they're either ubiquitous anyway (such as echo,cd,whoami), just too big, or hard to acheive with pure Go.

I'll just keep adding stuff as I need it. Contributions welcome!

Progress

So far, limited versions of the following commands are available: You can also use 'some [cmd] [args...]' for any of these.

Command	Options supported	STDIN support	Notes
basename			TODO: -a, -z
cat	-Ens	Yes
cp	-r	n/a	TODO: check symlink behaviour. Test large file support
dirname		n/a
grep	-nvHi -E -P	Yes	TODO: binary files support. !!No support for BRE - uses -E by default.
gunzip	-k	TODO	TODO: -f, prompt when file exists
gzip	-k	TODO	TODO: -f, prompt when file exists
head	-n	Yes	TODO: -c
ls	-lahr -1	Yes	TODO: -p -t
mv		n/a	TODO: check symlink behaviour
pwd		n/a
rm	-r	n/a	TODO: check symlink behaviour
scp	-r -P	?	INCOMPLETE - see scp-go .
sleep		n/a
tail	-n -F	Yes	TODO: -c, -f (by descriptor rather than by name). Bug: won't currently print last line unless terminated by a CR.
tar	-cvf -x -t -r	Yes (IN+OUT)	Just the core functionality so far.
tr		Yes
tee	-a	Yes	TODO: -i
touch		n/a
unzip	-t	TODO(STDOUT)	Password support would not be straightforward (not supported by standard lib)
wc	-c -l -w
which	-a	n/a
wget	-c -o	n/a	TODO: multi-threading? (not part of real wget). See wget-go
zip		TODO	Password support would not be straightforward (not supported by standard lib)

ToMaybeDo

• stat,size,file,type
• split,join,sort
• shred
• chmod/chown (relevant? Yes I think so)
• diff (too big? Maybe a minimal version would be good here)
• more (how easy is it?)
• du/dh (need OS-specifics: syscall would probably cover it for Unix and Windows)
• find/locate (find is a bit of a monster. locate is probably a stretch)
• ln (would it need some non-Go stuff for Windows? Yes - maybe an 'exec' at this stage)
• ps,kill,pgrep,pkill (need to explore mileage of os.FindProcess, syscall.Kill)
• id,w (is it doable cross-platform?)
• sshd (minimal version, for hosting file transfers etc), ssh (maybe just for running remote commands. Terminal handling might be too challenging for now)
• traceroute (see wtn. Requires setuid & therefore chowning + chmodding on Unix - on Windows I think you'd just need to run as administrator)
• ping (see above)
• dig (I think. Raw DNS requests & collect responses. Hmm, investigate go.net packages)
• chroot (chroot possible for unix via syscall - see gobox)

TooBig?

• less
• a text editor
• top
• dd (I guess. Maybe not)
• awk, sed
• xargs, find -exec
• rsync (algorithms might be a bit hard)
• cron (I guess service handling is another chapter aswell)

Not possible/easy with pure Go

• bg,fg
• fsck

See Also

• I have separated out the 'flag' functionality, and some other relevant behaviour, into a separate package, uggo
• I drew inspiration early on from a couple of similar projects - many thanks to gobox and go-coreutils. In both cases I considered a fork but my focus is just a little too different to make it feasible. Cheers guys