1 unstable release
0.2.0 | Sep 2, 2024 |
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#3 in #git-hub
220 downloads per month
135KB
3K
SLoC
The Universal Binary Installer Library and CLI Tool
When I say "universal", I mean it downloads binaries from GitHub releases.
When I say "binary", I mean it handles single-file executables like those created by most Go and Rust projects.
When I say "installer", I mean it plops the binary wherever you tell it to.
And finally, when I say "UBI", I don't mean "universal basic income", but that'd be nice too.
Using UBI as a Library
[dependencies]
ubi = "0.1.0"
See the ubi
docs on docs.rs for more details.
Installing It
You can install it by hand by downloading the latest release from the releases page.
There are also bootstrap installer scripts that provide a half-assed implementation of ubi
:
Linux and macOS
curl --silent --location \
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/houseabsolute/ubi/master/bootstrap/bootstrap-ubi.sh |
sh
If you run this as a non-root user, it will install ubi
into $HOME/bin
. If run as root it
installs it into /usr/local/bin
.
Environment Variable Parameters
The bootstrap script supports several environment variables as parameters.
Variable | Description |
---|---|
TARGET |
The directory in which to install ubi . Defaults to $HOME/bin for non-root users and /usr/local/bin for root. |
TAG |
The ubi version tag to download. Defaults to the latest release. |
FILENAME |
The name of the release file asset to download. This skips the platform detection and just downloads the file with this name. Use this if the bootstrap script fails to detect your platform (but please consider submitting a PR to fix the detection). |
GITHUB_TOKEN |
The GitHub API token to use when downloading releases. This is only necessary for private repos or if you are hitting the GitHub API anonymous usage limits. Hitting these limits is mostly likely to happen when you're running the bootstrap script repeatedly in CI. |
To set these variables, you can either set them in the environment before running the script, or you
can set them on the command line. Note that you need to set them on the right side of the pipe.
For example, to install a specific version of ubi
using the TAG
env var:
curl --silent --location \
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/houseabsolute/ubi/master/bootstrap/bootstrap-ubi.sh |
TAG=v0.0.15 sh
Windows
powershell -exec bypass -c "Invoke-WebRequest -URI 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/houseabsolute/ubi/master/bootstrap/bootstrap-ubi.ps1' -UseBasicParsing | Invoke-Expression"
You can run this from a command or the Powershell command line. This will install ubi.exe
into the
current directory.
How to Use It
USAGE:
ubi [OPTIONS]
OPTIONS:
-d, --debug Enable debugging output
-e, --exe <exe> The name of this project's executable. By default this is the same
as the project name, so for houseabsolute/precious we look for
precious or precious.exe. When running on Windows the ".exe" suffix
will be added as needed.
-h, --help Print help information
-i, --in <in> The directory in which the binary should be placed. Defaults to
./bin.
-m, --matching <matching> A string that will be matched against the release filename when
there are multiple files for your OS/arch, i.e. "gnu" or "musl".
Note that this will be ignored if there is only used when there is
only one matching release filename for your OS/arch
-p, --project <project> The project you want to install, like houseabsolute/precious or
https://github.com/houseabsolute/precious.
-q, --quiet Suppresses most output
--self-upgrade Use ubi to upgrade to the latest version of ubi. The --exe, --in,
--project, --tag, and --url args will be ignored.
-t, --tag <tag> The tag to download. Defaults to the latest release.
-u, --url <url> The url of the file to download. This can be provided instead of a
project or tag. This will not use the GitHub API, so you will never
hit the GitHub API limits. This means you do not need to set a
GITHUB_TOKEN env var except for private repos.
-v, --verbose Enable verbose output
-V, --version Print version information
Using a GitHub Token
If the GITHUB_TOKEN
environment variable is set, then this will be used for all API calls. This is
required to download releases for a private project. If you are running ubi
in a CI environment
that runs jobs frequently, you may also need this, as GitHub has a very low rate limit for anonymous
API requests.
However, you can also use the --url
option to bypass the GitHub API by providing the download link
directly.
Upgrading ubi
You can run ubi --self-upgrade
to upgrade ubi
using ubi
. Note that you must have write
permissions to the directory containing ubi
for this to work.
On Windows, this leaves behind a file named ubi-old.exe
that must be deleted manually.
Best Practices for Using ubi
in CI
There are a few things you'll want to consider when using ubi
in CI.
First, there are
the GitHub API rate limits.
This limit can be as low as 60 requests per hour per IP when not providing a GITHUB_TOKEN
, so you
will almost certainly want to provide this. When running in GitHub Actions you can use the
${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
syntax to set this env var, and in that case the rate limits are per
repository.
- name: Install UBI
shell: bash
run: |
curl --silent --location \
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/houseabsolute/ubi/master/bootstrap/bootstrap-ubi.sh |
sh
env:
GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
- name: Install tools with UBI
shell: bash
run: |
"$HOME/bin/ubi" --project houseabsolute/precious --in "$HOME/bin"
env:
GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
If you only run ubi
on one platform, you can avoid hitting the GitHub API entirely by using the
--url
parameter. But if you run on multiple platforms this can be tedious to maintain and it
largely defeats the purpose of using ubi
.
If you are downloading executables from repos you don't control and you don't use the --url
parameter, then you should use the --tag
parameter to specify the released version you want to
install. Otherwise ubi
will always download the latest version, which can lead to surprises,
especially if you are running the tools you download in CI.
Why This Is Useful
With the rise of Go and Rust, it has become increasingly common for very useful tools like ripgrep to publish releases in the form of a tarball or zip file containing a single executable. Having a single tool capable of downloading the right binary for your platform is quite handy.
Yes, this can be done in half a dozen lines of shell on Unix systems, but do you know how to do the equivalent in Powershell?
Once you have ubi
installed, you can use it to install any of these single-binary tools on Linux,
macOS, and Windows.
Is This Better Than Installing from Source?
I think so. While you can of course use go
or cargo
to install these tools, that requires an
entire language toolchain. Then you have to actually compile the tool, which may require downloading
and compiling many dependencies. This is going to be a lot slower and more error prone than
installing a binary.
Is This Better Than Installing from a deb/RPM/homebrew/chocolatey Package?
That's debatable. The big advantage of using ubi
is that you can use the exact same tool on Linux,
macOS, and Windows. The big disadvantage is that you don't get a full package that contains metadata
(like a license file) or extras like shell completion files, nor can you easily uninstall it using a
package manager.
Dependencies
~20–35MB
~559K SLoC