Ask HN: Best one liner to install bash script

#1

Post by shincert » Mon, Jul 03, 2017, 10:19 PM UTC

I'm working on a bash script and I want to make available a simple one-liner that automatically downloads and runs the install script. I've seen many variations of this one-liner. For example oh-my-zsh uses

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

What's the best way to do it? Or the most simple/pure? Is there maybe a blog post outlining the different ways?

Re: Ask HN: Best one liner to install bash script

#2

Post by dozzie » Mon, Jul 03, 2017, 10:51 PM UTC

Please don't. Running random scripts from the internets to install stuff is a idiotic idea that deserves to die already.

Make your build process dumb and installation process even dumber. The former should just run the compiler (as opposed to downloading and installing semi-related stuff; this belongs elsewhere), and the latter should just copy files. This way somebody could easily make a tarball or RPM/DEB package, which allows for repeatable installations. Running sh&t from the internets doesn't allow to reliably build packages and install software.

Don't assume that your users are idiots who cannot run two or three commands in terminal.

Re: Ask HN: Best one liner to install bash script

#3

Post by whatnotests » Mon, Jul 03, 2017, 11:53 PM UTC

try this:

curl https://example.com/file.sh | bash

If your shell script needs sudo access, just:

curl https://example.com/file.sh | sudo bash

Re: Ask HN: Best one liner to install bash script

#4

Post by melezhik » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 8:00 PM UTC

Hi! Take a look at sparrow - script package manager - https://sparrowhub.org as easy way to distribute portable scripts across servers.