Shell Path Manager

spm (which is short for Shell Path Manager) is a simple small tool to make shell path management more simple and intuitive.

Installation

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/barnett617/shell-path-manager/main/tools/install.sh | bash

Usage

spm list

spm list

This will list all your exist binary paths clearly in lines.(Compare to echo $PATH which results a long string)

spm check

spm check

This will list all the paths created by spm, it will show paths in key=value pairs so that you can get the key to remove a path.

spm add

spm add go=/Users/mac/go/bin

This will help you append the new path to exist PATH and add a record in ~/.spm/record which make this path unique. Then it will source your ~/.zshrc to make it work right away.

spm will first check whether the new path already exists in PATH, if it exists, it will not be added repeatly with a warning output.

spm remove

spm remove go

This will first get path from ~/.spm/record with the key, then delete the path from PATH. It will also source ~/.zshrc for you in order to prevent using relevant binary anymore.

Uninstallation

spm uninstall

This make spm to self destory then remove its binary path from PATH.

Or you can use remote script to uninstall if your local spm doesn't work correctly.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/barnett617/shell-path-manager/main/tools/uninstall.sh | bash

This will remove all files about spm(actually just a single folder ~/.spm) but won't update your PATH changes because spm is just a path manager tool to help you adding path and make it work more convenient.

Your PATH is still your PATH with or without it, it won't break your binary paths after you stopping using spm.

Except the paths you removed using spm, because spm will actually manipulate your PATH while adding or removing.

How it works

Installing

It will download a shell script and create a .spm folder in your user home including below files:

File	What for
.spm/bin/spm	The binary for executing from anywhere to use spm
.spm/record	A text file to store each binary path's key in order to simplify a path removal

That's it.

List exist paths

echo "$PATH" | tr ':' '\n'

It will list all the paths in your PATH in multiple lines.

List spm managed paths

cat ~/.spm/record

This is just list your PATH in a more friendly way.

Adding a new path

spm requires a key=value pair for adding a new path, the key is used for quick deletion, and the value is the path which will be appended to your PATH.

Remove a path

spm use a ~/.spm/record to store the record of each path so it can conveniently remove a path with just a key.

Paths installed before using spm can't be removed by specific a name, because there is no such key for the path to retrieve.

Uninstalling

It's just to remove of the ~/.spm folder, that's all the things spm works with. Then it will remove the spm binary from your PATH.

File Structure

.spm
├── bin
│   └── spm
└── record

Acknowledgement

Thanks to:

• bun with friendly installation process which inspired the installation script arrangement.
• nvm with thoughtful works about corner cases and tests which inspired the unit test designs.
• path-manager with trying to manage path with C implementation which inspired this shell version.

Problems

Because I develop this tool on MacOS with zsh, so I only tested it on my environment.

If someone uses it on other OS, for example Linux, there may be a predictible problem because I use sed for file writing and it may works differently on Linux and MacOS as belows:

• differences-between-sed-on-mac-osx-and-other-standard-sed
• sed-command-with-i-option-failing-on-mac-but-works-on-linux

Addtionaly, AFAIK, Windows has it GUI tool to manager path well, so this tool is not necessary.

If someone uses a shell other than zsh or bash, this tool is not supported yet.

If other problems occurs while using, PRs for compatibility are welcome.

License

See LICENSE.