📦 toolbox-shortcuts

• Introduction
• Use cases
• Installation
• How to use
  • Package Manager
• How to works
• Limitations
  • sudo
  • Installation path

📝 Introduction

The toolbox-shortcuts utility maps any executables from a toolbox container to the host and other containers, using symlinks. This helps maintain compatibility with host resources with executables in a container.

More informations about toolbox here.

🔀 Use cases

• I created a action in my file manager that uses a ImageMagick scripts installed in my container. Using toolbox-shortcuts, can i just create a symlink to convert executable and all goes works normally.

• My IDE - which is installed on the host - requires a javac (java compiler) executable in my $PATH. In the same way, I can create a symlink with toolbox-shortcuts to provides a javac symlink executable in my host system.

🔨 Installation

Clone this repository to new folder in ~/.local/opt:

$ git clone https://github.com/RuanKlein/toolbox-shortcuts.git ~/.local/opt/toolbox-shortcuts

Assuming the ~/.local/bin folder is in your $PATH, create symlink to cli utility:

$ ln -s ~/.local/opt/toolbox-shortcuts/toolbox-shortcuts-handler ~/.local/bin/toolbox-shortcuts

NOTE: due to how the toolbox works, the toolbox-shortcuts only works inside the user's folder.

🚀 How to use

Scenario:

• code executable in container1
• node executable in container2
• yarn executable in container2
• java executable in container3

In terminal:

$ toolbox-shortcuts create ~/.local/bin/code container1
Shortcut created: code [ ⬢ container1 ]

$ toolbox-shortcuts create ~/.local/bin/node container2
Shortcut created: node [ ⬢ container2 ]

$ toolbox-shortcuts create ~/.local/bin/yarn container2
Shortcut created: yarn [ ⬢ container2 ]

$ toolbox-shortcuts create ~/.local/bin/java container3
Shortcut created: java [ ⬢ container3 ]

Now you can run the code, node, yarn, and java from the host or from the container1, container2, or container3.

Package managers

Package managers like dnf, yum, apt, apt-get, pacman, zypper, rpm, dpkg also works with symlinks.

For example, to install php-cli from host using dnf:

$ toolbox-shortcuts create ~/.local/bin/dnf containername
Shortcut created: dnf [ ⬢ containername ]

$ dnf update
...

$ dnf install php-cli
...

$ toolbox-shortcuts create ~/.local/bin/php containername
Shortcut created: php [ ⬢ containername ]

$ php -v
...

📚 How to works

Considering the previous scenario, the symlinks were created in ~/.local/bin:

# From host
$ ls -l ~/.local/bin/{code,node,yarn,java}
~/.local/bin/code -> ~/.local/opt/toolbox-shortcuts/containers/container1
~/.local/bin/node -> ~/.local/opt/toolbox-shortcuts/containers/container2
~/.local/bin/yarn -> ~/.local/opt/toolbox-shortcuts/containers/container2
~/.local/bin/java -> ~/.local/opt/toolbox-shortcuts/containers/container3

All containers files are also symlinks:

$ ls -l ~/.local/opt/toolbox-shortcuts/containers
~/.local/opt/toolbox-shortcuts/containers/container1 -> ~/.local/opt/toolbox-shortcuts/toolbox-shortcuts-handler
~/.local/opt/toolbox-shortcuts/containers/container2 -> ~/.local/opt/toolbox-shortcuts/toolbox-shortcuts-handler
~/.local/opt/toolbox-shortcuts/containers/container2 -> ~/.local/opt/toolbox-shortcuts/toolbox-shortcuts-handler
~/.local/opt/toolbox-shortcuts/containers/container3 -> ~/.local/opt/toolbox-shortcuts/toolbox-shortcuts-handler

The magic is done by the script toolbox-shortcut-handler, which can identify if the execution is being done on the host or in a container. The executable name is used to be called in the correct container.

❗ Limitations

sudo

Executing from host, does not work with any symlink created by toolbox-shortcuts.

However, package managers can run without sudo. The toolbox-shortcut-handler script has a special handle to the package managers.

Installation path

Can only install in user folder, due to the functioning of the toolbox, which only shares the home folder.