Dingus

Dingus is a simple tool by and for the folks at Assemble to ease management of environment variables. Dingus supports two ways of applying environment variables (through the print and session subcommands), whichever you'd prefer is up to you. In the process of doing so, Dingus will set and increment the DINGUS_LEVEL environment variable so that it's possible to track the number of nested sessions you might be in.

Requirements

Dingus is written in the Rust Programming Language and requires the user to have at least the Stable Rust toolchain installed to compile. The preferred way to manage Rust toolchains is via rustup. You can also just install Rust from your favorite package manage if that's more your style.

Rustup Installation

curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh

Homebrew Installation

brew install rust

Debian Installation

As root: apt-get install rustc

Do note that your $PATH might need to be altered so that your system knows about rustc the Rust compiler, cargo Rust's package manager, and ~/.cargo/bin the default location for compiled binaries to be installed. rustup will inform you of how to make the change during its installation process, your systems package manage may or may not be as benevolent.

Using Dingus

Dingus has some nice built in help messages in case you forget, but here's a quick tutorial regardless.

This file should exist at ~/.config/dingus/example_1.yaml with the following contents:

HELLO: Hello World!
MULTI_LINE: "Hello there,
How are you?"

This file should exist at ~/.config/dingus/example_2.yaml with the following contents:

HELLO: Hello, Dingus Session!

Implicit Config Files

As of version 0.4.2 Dingus will search upwards, recursively, for a .dingus Yaml file if no --config file is specified. Just don't commit it to source control if you have secrets to keep.

Dingus List Example

As of version 0.4.0 it's easy to see what config files you have available. Try running dingus list or dingus ls to see options you can supply to the --config parameter of the Print and Session subcommands.

Dingus Print Example

Run dingus print -c example_1. See how dingus found the example.yaml file we created, read its contents, and printed out a command? That command can be piped into source - to set those variables directly in your current shell session. Neat, huh? dingus knows what shell you're running by looking at your $SHELL variable and printing out a command for that shell's syntax. I've only tested this in the fish and bash shells, so I don't know if I've got it right for all shells (actually, I know I haven't). If this doesn't work properly for you let me know what sytax I should be using for your shell and I'll toss it in there.

The full command to apply the variables to your shell is dingus print -c example_1 | source -. Normally it's discouraged to pipe anything into source - since it can open up remote code execution vulnerabilities, but you're not doing this on a production server so it's cool (right?).

Check it out: echo $HELLO and echo $MULTI_LINE both contain the values you set in the file ~/.config/dingus/example_1.yaml.

Dingus Session (Shell) Example

In case you don't want to pollute your current shell session with environment variables, dingus also supports opening a new session for you. By default, dingus will use whatever command your $SHELL variable refers to and assume that's a valid shell to place you into.

Try running dingus session -c example_2. You're now in a new shell session. Try echo $HELLO. Yep, we've applied the variables from ~/.config/dingus/example_2.yaml, which are now all accessible. Also available are any variables you set before entering the Dingus session, so if just ran the example in our "Dingus Print Example" section you'll find that $MULTI_LINE is still available.

As of version 0.3.7 Dingus will also accept shell when trying to invoke this subcommand. The semantics were close enough that it made sense to alias the two.

Keeping Dingus Up to Date

Once you have the Rust compiler installed you're free to install Dingus with cargo install dingus. I'd also recommend installing cargo-update so you can update all your Rust binaries in one go.

cargo install cargo-update will download, compile and install the cargo subcommand install-update. Once installed you should be able to rust cargo install-update -a to update any binaries you've installed with cargo in a hands-free manner.