insmaller

Config-driven installer. You describe install steps in a TOML file and point insmaller at it; the engine runs them. Ships as one binary with nothing else to install.

(it's "insmaller" — "inshorter" just didn't sound right.)

Install

cargo install insmaller

Or download a prebuilt binary from the releases page.

Quick start

Write an insmaller.toml (discovered automatically from the current directory up, or pass --config):

[settings]
# Both optional; only needed for the `setup` wizard / `install`.
catalog = "catalog.json"
wizard  = "wizard.toml"

# A named task: a sequence of steps you run on demand.
[task.hello]
description = "Say hello"

[[task.hello.steps]]
type   = "shell"
script = "echo hello from insmaller"

Run it:

insmaller task hello

Commands

[settings] default_command makes a bare insmaller run that command, and default_args prepends baseline arguments.

How it works

Steps are declarative — shell, exec, download, extract, copy, prompt/input, and more. What to install lives in config and a catalog, not in compiled code; adding a tool is editing TOML.

One rule shaped the design: an unattended run (CI, a container) never stops to wait for stdin. Inputs come from the environment or a prepared answers file; a missing optional input skips its step instead of blocking.

The engine is a separate crate, insmaller-core, embeddable in your own Rust program through one trait.

Full documentation: https://github.com/walangstudio/insmaller

License: MIT