webi-installers

webi is how developers install their tools

• no sudo
• no package manager
• no messing with system permissions
• in short: no nonsense

curl https://webinstall.dev/webi | bash

This repository contains the primary and community-submitted packages for webinstall.dev.

How webi works

• Contacts official release APIs for download URLs
• Selects the appropriate package version and archive format
• Installs to $HOME/.local/opt or $HOME/.local/bin, as appropriate.
• Updates PATH via $HOME/.config/envman/PATH.env
• Symlinks or copies current selected version

More technically:

1. <package>/releases.js transforms the package's release API into a common format
   • (i.e. HTML, CSV, TAB, or JSON into a specific JSON format)
   • common release APIs are in _common/ (i.e. _common/github.js)
2. _webi/bootstrap.sh is a template that exchanges system information for a correct installer
   • contructs a user agent with os, cpu, and utility info (i.e. macos, amd64, can unpack tar,zip,xz)
3. _webi/template.sh is the base installer template with common functions for
   • checking versions
   • downloading & unpacking
   • updating PATH
   • (re-)linking directories
4. <package>/install.sh may provide functions to override _webi/template.sh
5. Recap:
   • curl https://webinstall.dev/<pkg> => bootstrap-<pkg>.sh
   • bash bootstrap-<pkg>.sh => https://webinstall.dev/api/installers/<pkg>@<ver>.sh?formats=zip,tar
   • bash install-<pkg>.sh => download, unpack, move, link, update PATH

Philosophy (for package authors / maintainers publishing with webi)

• Should install to $HOME/.local/opt/<package>-<version> or $HOME/.local/bin
• Should not need sudo (except perhaps for a one-time setcap, etc)
• Examples:
  • Full Packages:
    • Node.js: https://github.com/webinstall/packages/tree/master/node
    • Golang: https://github.com/webinstall/packages/tree/master/golang
    • PostgreSQL: https://github.com/webinstall/packages/tree/master/postgres
  • Single-Binary Installers:
    • Caddy: https://github.com/webinstall/packages/tree/master/caddy
    • Ripgrep: https://github.com/webinstall/packages/tree/master/ripgrep
    • Gitea: https://github.com/webinstall/packages/tree/master/gitea
  • Convenience Scripts:
    • Prettier: https://github.com/webinstall/packages/tree/master/prettier
    • Rust-lang: https://github.com/webinstall/packages/tree/master/rustlang
    • vim-sensible: https://github.com/webinstall/packages/tree/master/vim-sensible

Creating an Installer

An install consists of 5 parts in 4 files:

my-new-package/
  - README.md (package info in frontmatter)
  - releases.js
  - install.sh (bash)
  - install.ps1 (PowerShell)

1. Create Description
2. Fetch Releases
3. Version Check (semi-optional)
4. Update PATH

See these examples:

• https://github.com/webinstall/packages/blob/master/rg/
• https://github.com/webinstall/packages/blob/master/golang/

The webinstall.dev server uses the list of releases returned by <your-package>/releases.js to generate a bash script with most necessary variables and functions pre-defined.

You just fill in the blanks.

TL;DR

Just create an empty directory and run the tests until you get a good result.

git clone [email protected]:webinstall/packages.git
pushd packages
npm install

mkdir -p ./new-package/
node _webi/test.js ./new-package/

1. Create Description

Just copy the format from any of the existing packages. It's like this:

README.md:

---
title: Node.js
homepage: https://nodejs.org
tagline: |
  JavaScript V8 runtime
description: |
  Node.js® is a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine
---

```bash
node -e 'console.log("Hello, World!")'
> Hello, World!
```

1. Fetch Releases

All you're doing in this step is just translating from one form of JSON or CSV or TAB or whatever, to a format understood by webi.

• Using Github releases? See ripgrep/releases.js (which uses _common/github.js)
• Have a special format? See golang/releases.js or node/releases.js.

It looks like this:

releases.js:

module.exports = function (request) {
  return github(request, owner, repo).then(function (all) {
    // if you need to do something special, you can do it here
    // ...
    return all;
  });
};

2. Bash Installer

1. Variables you can set
2. Functions you must define
3. Convenience / Helper Functions

(optional, if needed) Bash variables that you may define:

# Define this if the package name is different from the command name (i.e. golang => go)
pkg_cmd_name="foobar"

# These are used for symlinks, PATH, and test commands
pkg_dst="$HOME/.local/opt/foobar"
pkg_dst_cmd="$HOME/.local/opt/foobar/bin/foobar"
#pkg_dst_bin="$(dirname "$pkg_dst_cmd")"

# These are the _real_ locations for the above
pkg_src="$HOME/.local/opt/foobar-v$WEBI_VERSION"
pkg_src_cmd="$HOME/.local/opt/foobar-v$WEBI_VERSION/bin/foobar"
#pkg_src_bin="$(dirname "$pkg_src_cmd")"

(required) A version check function that strips all non-version junk

pkg_get_current_version() {
    # foobar-v1.1.7 => 1.1.7
    echo "$(foobar --version | head -n 1 | sed 's:foobar-v::')"
}

For the rest of the functions you can like copy/paste from the examples:

pkg_format_cmd_version() {}         # Override, pretty prints version

pkg_link                            # Override, replaces webi_link()

pkg_pre_install() {                 # Override, runs any webi_* commands
    webi_check                          # for $HOME/.local/opt tools
    webi_download                       # for things that have a releases.js
    webi_extract                        # for .xz, .tar.*, and .zip files
}

pkg_install() {}                    # Override, usually just needs to rename extracted folder to
                                    # "$HOME/.local/opt/$pkg_cmd_name-v$WEBI_VERSION"

pkg_post_install() {                # Override
    webi_path_add "$pkg_dst_bin"        # should probably update PATH
}

pkg_done_message() {}               # Override, pretty print a success message

Script API

See webi/template.sh

These variables will be set by the server:

WEBI_PKG=example@v1
WEBI_TAG=v1
WEBI_HOST=https://webinstall.dev
WEBI_RELEASES=https://webinstall.dev/api/releases/example@v1?os=macos&arch=amd64&pretty=true
WEBI_CSV=v1.0.2,
WEBI_VERSION=1.0.2
WEBI_MAJOR=1
WEBI_MINOR=0
WEBI_PATCH=2
WEBI_LTS=
WEBI_CHANNEL=stable
WEBI_EXT=tar
WEBI_PKG_URL=https://cdn.example.com/example-macos-amd64.tar.gz
WEBI_PKG_FILE=example-macos-amd64.tar.gz

PKG_NAME=example
PKG_OSES=macos,linux,windows
PKG_ARCHES=amd64,arm64,x86
PKG_FORMATS=zip,xz

WEBI_TMP=${WEBI_TMP:-"$(mktemp -d -t webinstall-foobar.XXXXXXXX)"}
WEBI_SINGLE=""

webi_check              # Checks to see if the selected version is already installed (and re-links if so)
webi_download           # Downloads the selected release to $HOME/Downloads/webi/<package-name>.tar.gz
webi_extract            # Extracts the download to /tmp/<package-name>-<random>/
webi_path_add /new/path # Adds /new/path to PATH for bash, zsh, and fish
webi_pre_install        # Runs webi_check, webi_download, and webi_extract
webi_install            # Moves extracted files from $WEBI_TMP to $pkg_src
webi_link               # replaces any existing symlink with the currently selected version
webi_post_install       # Runs `webi_path_add $pkg_dst_bin`

Roadmap

• Wrap release APIs to unify and expose
• Support more Windows packages
• Support arbitrary git urls (i.e. @github.com/node/node)
  • (maybe ghi node/node for github specifically)
• Support git as an archive format