shortcuts

Creates arbitrary shell scripts from a configuration file; shortcuts

The scripts are described as a toml file, see sample-config.toml for an example. You can specify the interpreter, and any links (just copies of the script) you'd want to create, and the command itself. Running shortcuts create creates individual shell scripts at ~/.shortcuts.

A similar functionality could be created with aliases, but those aren't on your $PATH; aren't visible to other scripts or accessible by system utilities like rofi (the major inspiration for writing this). You should add the shortcut directory to your path, by adding export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.shortcuts to your shell profile. If you want to use the scripts generated with system utilities, I'd recommend setting your path in ~/.profile in a #!/bin/sh script, and then running source ~/.profile in your corresponding bash/zsh startup files.

This allows me to create/change short/one liner shell scripts in one place, instead of creating/deleting/linking/copying files around in some bin directory manually.

For a more extensive example, see my shortcuts.toml file

If you edit this in vim, you can put the following line in your configuration, so that shortcuts create runs whenever you save the file:

autocmd BufWritePost shortcuts.toml !shortcuts create

or in neovim with lua:

vim.api.nvim_create_autocmd("BufWritePost", {
    command = "!shortcuts create",
    group = vim.api.nvim_create_augroup("shortcuts", { clear = true }),
    pattern = { "shortcuts.toml" },
    desc = "create shortcuts script when I save config file",
})

Install

Requires python 3.10+

python3 -m pip install git+https://github.com/purarue/shortcuts

Should be accessible as shortcuts or python3 -m shortcuts

Usage

Usage: shortcuts create [OPTIONS]

  Create the shell scripts!

Options:
  --debug / --quiet     Log shortcut files being created
  --conf PATH           specify a configuration file
  --shortcuts-dir PATH  specify a shortcuts directory
  --help                Show this message and exit.

You can also set the environment variables SHORTCUTS_CONFIG and SHORTCUTS_DIR, instead of passing --conf and --shortcuts-dir.