A script to "Modernize" your Linux CLI

Tools like grep, find, and cat have been replaced by newer tools, most of which are written in Rust. These newer tools perform better while also being more user friendly. It makes sense to stop using the old tools and switch over.

Your distribution will have those tools packaged but they’ll usually be outdated unless you’re using a rolling release distro like Arch Linux. I use Ubuntu which tends to be outdated. I decided to write my own tool to download and install these tools so that I always have the latest versions.

The script is written in Fish shell syntax because it’s my default shell. Take a look:

#!/usr/bin/fish

set DEST_DIR $HOME/.local/bin

function latest_tag
    set repo $argv[1]
    set tag (curl -L "https://api.github.com/repos/$repo/releases/latest" 2>/dev/null | jq '.tag_name' | cut -d '"' -f 2)
    echo $tag
end

function download
    set repo $argv[1]
    set tag (latest_tag "$repo")
    set dest $argv[2]
    set filename $argv[3]
    set download_url "https://github.com/$repo/releases/download/$tag/$filename"
    curl -L -o $dest $download_url 2>/dev/null
end

function neovim
    set dest "$DEST_DIR/nvim"
    download neovim/neovim $dest "nvim.appimage"
    set chmod +x $dest
end

function ripgrep
    set dest "/tmp/ripgrep.deb"
    set repo BurntSushi/ripgrep
    set tag (latest_tag "$repo")
    set filename ripgrep_$tag-1_amd64.deb
    download $repo $dest $filename
    sudo dpkg -i $dest
end

function fd
    set dest "/tmp/fd.deb"
    set repo sharkdp/fd
    set tag (latest_tag "$repo" | cut -d "v" -f 2)
    set filename fd_"$tag"_amd64.deb
    echo $filename
    download $repo $dest $filename
    sudo dpkg -i $dest
end

function zoxide
    set dest "/tmp/zoxide.deb"
    set repo ajeetdsouza/zoxide
    set tag (latest_tag "$repo" | cut -d "v" -f 2)
    set filename zoxide_"$tag"-1_amd64.deb
    download $repo $dest $filename
    sudo dpkg -i $dest
end

function bat
    set dest "/tmp/bat.deb"
    set repo sharkdp/bat
    set tag (latest_tag "$repo" | cut -d "v" -f 2)
    set filename bat_"$tag"_amd64.deb
    download $repo $dest $filename
    sudo dpkg -i $dest
end

neovim

ripgrep

fd

zoxide

bat

This script will download binaries to $HOME/.local/bin or install the debian package if available. It currently installs everything at once but I’m thinking of adding arguments to allow installing/updating each tool separately. You can run this script any number of times to fetch and install the latest version of the tools.