arbash: After Rain BAmboo SHoots

arbash is a command line based text templates manager.

Unlike to similar templating tools, arbash does not provide any pre-defined template sets.

Instead, arbash presents a simple solution to create, edit and apply templates using common set of cli tools.

Core concept

When creating a template, arbash creates a diff file out of your git commits.

Then arbash helps you to edit the diff file by launching EDITOR. You are supposed to edit the diff file so that you can parametarize anything by replacing with environment variable like $name or so.

Finally arbash applys your templates by filling env vars with envsubst and running patch command.

Installation

arbash is a nix native application.

Install nix package manger and run the following command:

$ nix-env -i -f https://github.com/kayhide/arbash/archive/master.tar.gz

After successful installation the arbash command is available.

$ arbash --version
0.1.0

Usage

Create a template

Since arbash works with git, you should be in a directory of git repository.

As a starting point, find a git commit ref with git command or whatever tool you want. arbash creates a diff file by issuing git diff ref~1 ref. So ref can be anything if it points a commit.

If you want to use a HEAD as a ref, you can ommit it.

After finding your starting point, create a template with the following command:

$ arbash create my-first-template $ref 

This creates a template with the name of my-first-template and start an editor of EDITOR.

Edit a template

As after creating, you can also start an editor as:

$ arbash edit my-first-template

Edit the diff file as you like. To parametarize some part of diff file, replace rigid texts with environment variables.

For example, assume that you are editing diff file of:

...
+stdenv.mkDerivation {
+  pname = "arbash";
+  version = "0.1.0";
...

To parametarize the package name and version, you can do it as:

+stdenv.mkDerivation {
+  pname = "${name}";
+  version = "${version}";

When finished to edit, just save it and close the editor. Now the template is ready to use.

Apply the template

To apply a template while filling the parameters, run the following command:

$ name=new-thing version=0.1.0 arbash fire my-first-template

That is it. Check the result with git command.

Contributions

Feel free to open an issue or PR. Thanks!