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Show HN: fresh - a tool to manage and distribute dot files (think Bundler)

freshshell.com

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Re: Show HN: fresh - a tool to manage and distribute dot files (think Bundler)

#4

Post by samdk »

jasoncodes wrote: post #2

Looking forward to hearing what HN thinks of fresh. We've already got a bunch more features planned. http://github.com/freshshell/fresh/issues

You are asking someone to execute a shell script directly from the internet, which is questionable in the first place. And then you're making it much much worse by asking them to do it with a non-https link, meaning that someone can trivially execute a MITM attack.

Your webpage doesn't have any explanation other than a video. I can read a paragraph or two in a couple of seconds--I'm not going to take a minute and a half (and stop listening to the music I'm listening to) to watch a video. The GitHub README doesn't really have any information about what it is either.

I haven't actually tried this, because I have no idea what it is. The other comment in here linked to an example .freshrc file--I noted that every line that's not a comment starts with the string 'fresh ', which seems like an obvious annoyance. Even if you want it to just be a shell script you can execute, you could support a batch mode to do something like this, for example:

    fresh batch

Re: Show HN: fresh - a tool to manage and distribute dot files (think Bundler)

#6

Post by twe4ked »

samdk wrote: post #4
jasoncodes wrote: post #2

Looking forward to hearing what HN thinks of fresh. We've already got a bunch more features planned. http://github.com/freshshell/fresh/issues

You are asking someone to execute a shell script directly from the internet, which is questionable in the first place. And then you're making it much much worse by asking them to do it with a non-https link, meaning that someone can trivially execute a MITM attack. Your webpage doesn't have any explanation other than a video. I can read a paragraph or two in a couple of seconds--I'm not going to take a minute and a h…

Here's the install script (https://raw.github.com/freshshell/fresh/master/install.sh). You can have a read though if you like. I don't know any safer ways to install applications. SSL is a good idea though.

We will add some more info to the home page but we were trying to keep most of the info in the README.

> The GitHub README doesn't really have any information about what it is either.

What else would you like to know?

The batch mode is a good idea, however the way we're doing it is a tried and true method used by many dev tools Bundler, Vundle, etc.

Re: Show HN: fresh - a tool to manage and distribute dot files (think Bundler)

#7

Post by twe4ked »

lukeholder wrote: post #5

Whats to stop malicious git repos changing an alias after you have already added it to your freshrc? I think locking to a specific git ref needs to be top priority.

Absolutely. This is on the road map (https://github.com/freshshell/fresh/issues/11). At the moment running `fresh update` is the only way to update the source repos. I realise this isn't ideal, but we never update repos without you knowing.

Re: Show HN: fresh - a tool to manage and distribute dot files (think Bundler)

#8

Post by nathanaelkane »

lukeholder wrote: post #5

Whats to stop malicious git repos changing an alias after you have already added it to your freshrc? I think locking to a specific git ref needs to be top priority.

I like the idea of locking an entry to a git ref, I've created a ticket on the issue tracker: https://github.com/freshshell/fresh/issues/25.

Edit: woops it was already a ticket, closed mine.

Re: Show HN: fresh - a tool to manage and distribute dot files (think Bundler)

#9

Post by zrail »

Interesting, but I think I'll stick with my own system[1]. I organize by task, not repo or program. Also I try to do a minimum of symlinking, instead relying on convention and PATH manipulation.

Edit: I don't mean to discourage you, by the way. The more variety in dotfile management the better.

[1]: http://bugsplat.info/2012-08-11-task-oriented-dotfiles.html

Re: Show HN: fresh - a tool to manage and distribute dot files (think Bundler)

#10

Post by jasoncodes »

zrail wrote: post #9

Interesting, but I think I'll stick with my own system[1]. I organize by task, not repo or program. Also I try to do a minimum of symlinking, instead relying on convention and PATH manipulation. Edit: I don't mean to discourage you, by the way. The more variety in dotfile management the better. [1]: http://bugsplat.info/2012-08-11-task-oriented-dotfiles.html

Organising by task sounds very similar to our goals.

One of fresh's major features is being able to source a subset of another's dotfiles (at a per file level). For example, in my office we are all using fresh to source common git aliases.

This module/task idea is certainly interesting and is something we have been thinking about. Thanks for your feedback.

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