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na (aka: nested-aliases, non-aliases, not-[an]-alias) is a CLI tool to effortlessly manage context aware nested shortcuts for shell commands.

Contents

• Motivation
• Features
• Installation
  • Binaries
  • AUR
  • Homebrew
  • Source
  • Build
• Usage
  • Adding shortcuts
  • Listing shortcuts
  • Running shortcuts
  • Removing shortcuts
  • Argument Placeholders
• Shell Completions
  • Bash
  • Zsh
  • Fish
  • Powershell
• Configuration
  • Showcase
  • Example
• Known Issues
• Future Plans
• License

Motivation

Shell aliases are fun. They provide an easy and straightforward way to create simple shortcuts without too much fuss, but not without few caveats:

• Aliases must be named with a single word - It makes grouping related aliases within the same context a bit awkward, e.g:

  alias lab-password-sftpgo="k get secret -n sftpgo sftpgo-admin -ojsonpath='{.data.admin-password}' | base64 -d"
  alias lab-password-gitea="k get secret -n gitea gitea-secret -ojsonpath='{.data.password}' | base64 -d"
  alias lab-create-secret="k create secret --dry-run -oyaml"

  Using dashes (or underscores) to separate conceptual subcommands interferes with the flow of shell completion and renaming the common prefixes of the aliases names is inconvenient as well. This limitation also prevent aliases from imitating commands.
• Without implementing workarounds, Aliases (or any shell configuration) are global for the current user, and thus there is no context aware toggling of aliases - Some of the aliases might be relevant only for a single purpose or project.
• Aliases do not support passing non suffixed arguments - Aliases are substituted. That is why there is no support for passing arguments that are not suffixed to the alias itself. A possible workaround is to use shell functions or other tools.

Last but not least, this project is a great excuse for me to work with Go, as it is a great language for developing CLI tools. Single binaries for CLI tools are awesome.

Features

• Nesting aliases (ehm, shortcuts).
• Supports passing arguments and argument substitutions.
• Dynamic shell completions.
• Simple and readable configuration.
• Layered configuration (local and home config).

Installation

Binaries

Available in Releases page.

AUR

Use your favorite AUR helper:

yay -S na-bin

Homebrew

Install from a tap:

brew install moyiz/tap/na

Source

go install github.com/moyiz/na@latest

Build

git clone https://github.com/moyiz/na.git
go build .
# And move it to your preferred `bin`
mv na ~/.local/bin

Usage

Adding shortcuts

Use the add subcommand (or its shorter form: a) to add new shortcuts:

na add my shortcut cwd pwd
na a my longcut cwd -- echo A shortcut to show current working directory, which is '$PWD'
na a e echo
na a swap -- echo %2% %1%

In the first example (without double dashes), the last argument is the target of the shortcut, i.e na run my shortcut cwd will execute pwd. This is handy for single word commands.

Multi word commands can be quoted (i.e na add my shortcut "ls -ltra") but using a double dash is also a valid option. In the second example, anything after the double dash is considered target, thus na run my longcut cwd will run that long echo. Notice that $PWD is single quoted. This is to ensure the actual substitution will occur when the shortcut is called, rather than when it is being added.

If the config directory does not exist, na will create it.

Listing shortcuts

Run na without arguments, or use the list / ls subcommand if you prefer.

na
na ls
na list

Running shortcuts

Use the run subcommand (or its shorted form: r).

na run my shortcut cwd
na r e -- Hello World!
na r swap -- a b  # output: b a

The first example is self explanatory. Notice the double dash in the second example. In run it is mandatory in order to pass arguments to the shortcut itself.

na will try to auto-detect the current calling shell and invoke the command in it. If it fails to detect or current shell is not supported, sh will be used as fallback.

Removing shortcuts

Use the remove subcommand (or its shorter form: rm).

na remove my shortcut cwd
na remove my longcut
na rm e

Notice that this command accepts partial shortcuts. It will remove the entire subtree of given shortcuts. The first two examples above can be reduced to a single na rm my to delete both.

Argument Placeholders

na supports magic placeholders in commands. Magic placeholders are wrapped with % and allow passing dynamic arguments directly into the target command.

We will start with an example:

$ na add swap -- echo %2% %1%
$ na run swap -- a b
b a
$ na run swap -- a b c d
b a c d
$ na add double -- echo %2% %2%
$ na run double -- a b
b b a
$ na run double -- a b c d
b b a c d

These placeholders are "popped" from the given argument list into the target command. All arguments that are not referenced by a magic placeholder will be passed to the end of the command as regular arguments.

This behavior allows more flexibility in command generation, such as:

na add secret -- kubectl get secret -n %1% %2% -ojsonpath='{.data.%3%}' \| base64 -d
na r secret -- gitea gitea-admin-secret password
na r secret -- gitea gitea-admin-secret username

Tip: Argument placeholders can also be negative to reference arguments backwards.

$ na add last is first -- echo %-1%
$ na run last is first -- a b c d e
e a b c d

Shell Completions

Some installation methods already setup completions. To activate them manually, add the following to your shell's configuration.

Bash

Add this to your ~/.bashrc:

source <(na completion bash)

Zsh

Add this to your ~/.zshrc:

source <(na completion zsh)

In case of command not found: compdef, add these too:

autoload -Uz compinit
compinit

Fish

Add this to ~/.config/fish/config.fish

na completion fish | source

Powershell

Exist but untested.

Configuration

na looks for configuration files in few locations:

• Local directory (.na.yaml)
• Current user home config directory (~/.config/na/na.yaml)
• XDG config directory (/etc/xdg/na/na.yaml)

By default, na will merge these configs for list and run, and use current user's home config directory for add and remove.

This behavior will be overridden by passing either:

• --config FILE or -c FILE: set the only configuration file to use.
• --local or -l: synonymous to -c .na.yaml.
• --user or -u: synonymous to -c ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/na/na.yaml.

na configuration is a simple dictionary, mapping shortcut names to either commands or other subcommands.

Showcase

$ cat .na.yaml
cat: .na.yaml: No such file or directory
$ cat ~/.config/na/na.yaml
cat: /home/moyiz/.config/na/na.yaml: No such file or directory
$ na add my global -- echo Global
$ cat ~/.config/na/na.yaml
my:
    global: echo Global
$ na add -l my local -- echo Local
$ cat .na.yaml 
my:
    local: echo Local
$ na
my global -- echo Global
my local -- echo Local
$ na run my local
Local
$ na run my global
Global
$ na rm -l my
$ cat .na.yaml
{}
$ cat ~/.config/na/na.yaml
my:
    global: echo Global

Example

lab:
  secret:
    gitea: k get secret -n gitea gitea-admin-secret -ojsonpath='{.data.password}' | base64 -d
    nextcloud:  get secret -n gitea gitea-admin-secret -ojsonpath='{.data.password}' | base64 -d
    new: k create secret generic --dry-run -oyaml > secret.yaml
    seal: kubeseal --scope cluster-wide -oyaml < secret.yaml > sealed-secret.yaml
    sealete: na r lab secret seal && rm secret.yaml
  renovate: k delete job -n renovate renovate-manual; k create -n renovate job --from cronjob/renovate renovate-manual
  backup:
    prepare: sudo mount -t nfs nas:/pool/backups /media/backups 
    vm: ssh proxmox.home ./backup.sh
    local:
        volumes: na r backup prepare && rsync ...
        home: na r backup prepare && rsync ...
random: echo $RANDOM

Known Issues

• Since na spawns a new shell to run commands, some builtin commands will have no effect on current shell, e.g: alias, cd, declare, export, pushd, read, set, shopt, source and so on.

Future Plans

• Read aliases from environment variables (and .env).
• Rename aliases.
• Dynamically creates actual commands, e.g.

  my alias
  # Instead of:
  na run my alias

License

See LICENSE.