Bashrun 1.0 rc2 -- complete rewrite, needs testing

Question

Dear fellow archers,
About two years ago I posted an early version of bashrun on these forums. Bashrun is a versatile application laucher based on bash, using a small, one-line terminal window for it's user interface to provide a simple run-dialog.
The positive response I got here convinced me of properly publishing and developing it further. Credits are due to Ghost1227, Shapeshifter, DieterBe and lots of others from the Arch Community. Without your support and feedback, I would probably have forgotten about bashrun soon.
Unfortunately, my bash scripting skills were next to non-existent by the time i wrote the first version, and thus the current version of bashrun (0.16) suffers from a lot of shortcomings and ugly hacks. So I decided to do a complete rewrite to do it properly and implement a lot of stuff I had in mind for it.
I've now arrived at a release candidate for what I plan to become bashrun 1.0. I feel that I need some more testing before releasing it properly, since I can't possibly test it under all environments with every suited terminal out there... so I need your help! Please use the PKGBUILD provided below to install it. Note that the release candidate won't touch any existing config files from earlier versions, so you can simply downgrade again if you run into problems or just don't like it.
Some of the features and benefits bashrun 1.0 provides:
* An application launcher that works like bash, simply because it is bash. Completion, history, aliases are thus supported out of the box already.
* Launch graphical and terminal applications from any terminal, either by using a full-fledged bashrun session in a regular terminal or by sourcing a lightweight remote interface.
* Launch terminal/console apps in dedicated terminals, e.g. use a different terminal program for certain apps or use different font and geometry settings.
* Rewrite non-executable command lines using regular expressions and substitution, along with a simple interface to programmable completion, e.g add web shortcuts, file associations, special rules for certain commands, etc.
* Add your own actions, i.e. change and extend the core functionality of bashrun.
* Write plugins implementing new actions, handlers, rules etc. and share them with other users... (pacman/abs/aur plugin anyone?)
* Use bashrun as a lightweight replacement for graphical su frontends like gksu or kdesu. (see bashrun --help)
* Better suited for use in tiling wms (Tip: use urxvt, with -override-redirect to make bashrun float)
* Generalized terminal support -- you tell bashrun how to use the terminal of choice
* Now comes with it's own little helper application for window management -- no xdotool required anymore
* Uses GNU autotools for installation
In general, bashrun provides different kinds of configuration objects that can be used to implement a great variety of helpful features. Note that by simply adding 'eval "$(bashrun --remote-control)"' to your bashrc you will get remote access to all of bashrun's features from any terminal on your desktop. This is a feature I personally can't live without anymore. For example, consider the following bits of configuration:
+rule su-run
--match '/^emacs +/etc//'
+rule su-term-notify
--match '/^/etc/rc.d/' '/^/etc/cron\..+/'
Now any command that begins with 'emacs /etc' will automatically be run as root, prompting me for the root password using the bashrun terminal window. Likewise, any command beginning with '/etc/rc.d', '/etc/init.d' or '/etc/cron.d' will be launched as root, it's output shown in a small terminal that automatically closes two seconds after the command is finished. But enough of this...
What you can do to help
Be sure to read the "Getting Started" section of the manual page and take a look at the system-wide config file located at /etc/xdg/bashrun/bashrun.rc. The latter is extensively commented and contains a lot of examples, and should give you an idea of what bashrun is capable of. Also, press F1 in bashrun to view a list of keybindings.
Any kind of feedback will be helpful. I've tried to make the manual as concise as possible, but it's probably far from perfect. If there's anything unclear or doesn't work as expected, please complain. If you don't feel like digging very deep, a simple "Runs fine in KDE and urxvt" is just as good, though.
Installation
This PKGBUILD should be all you need to get going:
pkgname=bashrun
pkgver=1.0.0rc2
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="Launch applications from interactive bash sessions"
arch=('i686' 'x86_64')
url="http://bashrun.sourceforge.net"
license=('GPL2')
depends=('bash' 'libx11')
source=(http://bashrun.sourceforge.net/${pkgname}-${pkgver}.tar.gz)
md5sums=('f2879c71152713dbe8190f84949e219c')
build() {
cd "${srcdir}/${pkgname}-${pkgver}"
./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc
make || return 1
package() {
cd "${srcdir}/${pkgname}-${pkgver}"
make DESTDIR="${pkgdir}" install
Note that the first startup may be somewhat slow. This will improve once the configuration has been cached.
Thanks in advance, and have fun!
Best regards,
Henning
EDIT: I've created a second release candidate, fixing a bug that would plugin lookups fail when multiple directories where present in XDG_CONFIG_DIRS. The PKGBUILD given in this post has been updated accordingly. The tarball is available at http://bashrun.sourceforge.net/bashrun-1.0.0rc2.tar.gz
Last edited by hbekel (2010-10-05 16:55:11)

Answer 1

demian wrote:That's a very nice app.
After installing it, i had to create /etc/bashrun and copy the content of /etc/xdg/bashrun to that folder.
I'd prefer if that step were already integrated into the makefile/pkgbuild, preferably using ~/.config/ instead of /etc/.
This shouldn't be necessary if bashrun was configured with --sysconfdir=/etc, like in the PKGBUILD i posted. This is explained in the README file. (EDIT: Or your XDG_CONFIG_DIRS is set to "/etc" instead of "/etc/xdg", in which case bashrun expects the config file at "/etc/bashrun/bashrun.rc". Please check.)
No package should install anything to the user's home directory, so I provide a system wide config file to start from. I could copy the config file to the user's XDG_CONFIG_HOME on first startup, but a lot of people don't like that, and it's considered bad taste. (See rmshit for example). Other projects like openbox or awesome don't do this either, it's up to the user.
demian wrote:Also, if I start bashrun via Openbox shortcut (...) it produces an error message:
After i click OK in that error message window bashrun finally starts.
That error occurs because bashrun is started by Openbox without the XDG_CONFIG_DIRS variable.
I'm currently avoiding this issue by placing the bashrun.rc in ~/.config/bashrun/ and commenting out line 12 (+plugins terminal) but maybe that's something you want to have a look at.
Yes, this is a bug i discovered recently. I'll post an rc2 version here soon, please stay tuned.
Apart from this bug, bashrun doesn't care whether the XDG variables are actually defined, it uses the defaults in that case (as required by the xdg spec). Your XDG vars should be set to the defaults from /etc/profile.d/xorg.sh in any case, though.
demian wrote:Also, i suppose, there is no easy way of making this use zsh instead of bash?
No, that may be a long term goal, if it's possible at all. (I know nothing about zsh, and bashrun uses some very bash specific features)
Last edited by hbekel (2010-10-05 13:30:01)