A package management application without a package management service.

MIT

0.0.3

This application is a cross-OS solution to creating zip files for distribution and fetching files via HTTP(S). The project's goal is to provide a universal application distribution utility that is language agnostic, operating system independent, and platform independent. The only additional requirement for distributing application packages is online storage on a web server. This application provides all the utilities to retrieve, bundle, and unpackage applications.

biddle is inspired by the incredible awesomeness of NPM, but seeks to accomplish a few additional goals:

• integrity - Downloaded packages will perform a hash comparison before they are unpackaged. If the hashes don't match the zip file will be saved in the downloads directory awaiting a human touch.
• autonomy - There is no central authority here. Host your own publications and manage them as you please with any name you choose.
• management - There is no dependency hell here. Dependency management will not be automated, but a means to manage and review the status of all installed/published packages is provided.
• freedom - biddle will work everywhere Node.js runs. It can be used with any application written in any language whether binary or text.

Unstable and in early developement.

• command get is complete
• command hash is complete
• command help is complete
• command list is complete
• command markdown is complete
• command publish is complete
• command unpublish is complete
• command zip is complete
• command unzip os complete
• add support for a .biddleignore file, this file contain a list of items to not include in the published zip
  • File is read
  • Support and processing is not added yet
  • Will not include support for comments or wildcards in initial launch
• add support for variants in package.json, which allows named variants where each has a custom ignore list
• Work on install is blocked pending configuration work
  • Hash files must now become JSON storing hash, name, and version
  • ZIP approach needs to be reevaluated... details in next point
• Advanced configuration work is underway now. Configuration details will go into the package.json file.
  • I need to revise the approach to creating ZIP files. I cannot simply point to a directory and zip it for security reasons. Instead I will need to index the child items of the target directory for addition to a ZIP file. The reason has to do with potential (malicious) naming collisions uniformity violations.
  • Allow restriction of named directories when creating a zip so that production only packages don't have dev dependencies, build systems, unit tests, systems files, and so forth
  • Allow definition of custom default locations.
• Work on status is not started. This command will compare an installed application's version against a published version to determine if out of date.
  • Must allow an app name as an argument to manually check that application or all to check all installed applications
  • Status automation or intervals would be nice... such as checking app versions once a week and providing a message when out of date
• Work on uninstall command is blocked pending completion of install.
  • Must delete the application
  • Must remove the application from the list

Commands are the third command line argument, or second if the optional node argument is absent. Commands are case insensitive, but values and local paths are case sensitive. All local address are either absolute from the root or relative from the current working directory.

Merely downloads the requested resource and saves it as a file with the same filename. If the filename is not provided in the URI the final directory up to the domain name will become the filename, and if for some reason that doesn't work the default filename is download.xxx.

Download a file to the default location, which is the provided downloads directory.

node biddle get http://google.com

Download a file to an alternate location.

node biddle get http://google.com ../mydirectory

Prints to console a SHA512 hash against a local resource.

node biddle hash downloads/myfile.zip

Prints the readme.md file contents to console in a human friendly way.

No command will still generate the readme data.

node biddle

The default word wrapping is set to 100 characters.

node biddle help

Set a custom word wrap limit.

node biddle help 80

(not written yet) Downloads the requested resource, but decompresses and unpackages the zip before writing files to disk.

Will list all installed and/or published applications with their locations and latest versions. It can take the optional argument installed or published to output a specific list or both lists are produced.

Only output the installed list.

node biddle list installed

Output both lists

node biddle list

Allows the internal markdown parser used by the help command to be supplied to a directed file to ease reading of documentation directly from the command line.

The first argument after the command is the address of the file to read.

node biddle markdown applications/example/readme.md

You can also specify a custom word wrap limit. The default is still 100.

node biddle markdown applications/example/readme.md 80

Writes a hash file and a zip file with a version number to the publications directory or some other specified location. Applications are required to have a file in their root directory named package.json with properties: name and version.

Create a zip in the default location: ./publications/myapplication

node biddle publish ../myapplication

Publish to a custom location: ./myAlternateDirectory/myapplication

node biddle publish ../myapplication myAlternateDirectory

Use quotes if any argument contains spaces:

node biddle publish "c:\program files\myApplication"

(not written yet) Will check whether an installed application is behind the latest published version. Automation is planned but still under consideration.

(not written yet) Run the unit tests.

(not written yet) Will delete an installed application by name and remove the application from the installed list.

Will delete a published application by name and remove the application from the published list. An application name is required and not the address to the application.

node biddle unpublish myApplication

Unzips a local zipped file.

Unzip to the default location, the supplied downloads directory.

node biddle unzip myZipFile.zip

Unzip to a specified location.

node biddle unzip myZipFile.zip myDirectory

Zips local files or local directories into a zip file.

Zip to the default location, the supplied downloads directory.

node biddle zip ../myApplication

Zip to a specified location.

node biddle zip ../myApplication myCustom/Location/Directory

• This application is written in JavaScript and requires Node.js to run.
• This application makes use of zip and hash utilities provided by the operating system.
• The test command requires Pretty Diff and JSLint as git submodules from Github.