Opal

A command line framework for Bash users

Each person creates their own dotfiles. There's often a lot of copying between them, and even between multiple configs for a specific person. Scripting in Bash can be challenging. Opal is a framework that fixes these two issues, by providing a cohesive set of files to create a strong, common foundation.

This foundation is easily re-used across users and machines. Opal is designed to be easily extended, allowing you to add your custom configuration on top of it. Opal also provides a Bash scripting layer.

Put simply, Opal is a collection of unix/linux dotfiles and utilities, reusable across machines and users, for people who love the command line.

Current Version

Version 3.0.0 is the latest version.

Getting Started

1. Download the opal code and extract the tarball.

   You can download the Opal Zip file from Github with your browser, or run the following commands in your terminal

   $ curl --location --output opal.zip https://github.com/andrewwoods/opal/archive/master.zip

   $ unzip opal.zip

2. Change into the new directory

   $ cd opal-master

3. Run the install script

   $ ./install.bash

This creates a symbolic link in your home directory, to the directory where you ran the install script. Also, opal created a some dot files in your home directory - notably the .bashrc, .bash_profile, and .vimrc - to allow for your own customizations, while using opal resources. if you already had those files, don't panic - your files were backed up.

What's In Here

There's a lot in this new version of Opal. In fact, I created the Opal Documentation site to show you everything.

After you install Opal, here's a few commands to help you explore

Start with show names to see all the bash functions. Pro tip: use fzf to filter the list.

$ show names

Pick one of those names and pass it to desc, to see how it's defined. For example, you'll see opal:today in the list.

$ desc opal:today

To see where it's defined, pass it to loc.

$ loc opal:today

The cdls function will change you to the directory you give it, then list the contents of that directory. The up command will navigate you up a number of directories of your file system.