ix

(eeks) Simple dotfile pre-processor with a per-file configuration

Summary (TL;DR)

• ix.py is all you need
• config is an ini file.
• files to be processed must contain #: ix-config within the first 20 lines.
• more options can be specified per file after the #: ix-config.
• variables to be processed are defined as follows #{{ section.variable }}.
• default config directory ~/.config/ix/ixrc (overwrite with -c)
• default parse directory ~/dots (overwrite with -d)
• full docs here

The Long Version

What?

pre-processor: a program that processes its input data to produce output that is used as input to another program.

This is a tool that allows you to define placeholders within your files (such as ${{ colors.background }}) and then have them replaced with a value you've defined somewhere else whenever you please. Allowing you to stay worryless about where that value might be stored since you know it can only be stored in one place: ixrc.

Why?

I've always had a lot of environment variables scattered all around the place. It's hard to keep track of everything in this way.

ix is an attempt at simplifying all of that by providing a single, central file that contains every single variable you might think of, or would need: colors, paths, editor, etc. All defined and controlled by you.

Aside from that, it also provides some nifty addons on top of the normal "find and replace" behaviour to allow you to customise exactly what happens to each file it reads, giving you even more control and structure.

How does it work?

There's a total of 2 pieces to the puzzle:

1. The configuration that contains everything. By default ix will look for it in ~/.config/ix/ixrc but can be easily overwritten with the -c flag.
2. The actual preprocessor script, the python file.

When you run the script, it'll assume everything you want to parse is in ~/dots, which is probably wrong so you'll want to overwrite that. You can do that with the -d flag and specifying a new path.

ix will recursively read through the given directory and find any files that contain the ix declaration (which looks like this #: ix-config). Basically a comment followed by a colon. This //: works too, and this /*:, even this --:. If it doesn't work, then it can be added.

Note that the definition needs to be within the first 20 lines of the file otherwise ix will ignore that file.

The lines after the definition can contain more information about how ix should handle this specific file. These are the simple addons I mentioned earlier. For example:

#: ix-config
#: to: /etc/whatever/

...

Check the full list of available options in the documentation section

Here we tell ix to store the file inside /etc/whatever after it's been parsed, under the same name as the original file. Notice that the information related to ix is directly after the definition. This matters.

Concrete example

Assume we have a configuration that looks like this:

[colors]
blue = blue
red = green

We might then have a bash script that executes something and we want those colors to be given as parameters. Something like this:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# magic.sh


#: ix-config
#: to: $HOME/.config/executable/executablerc

# ...

executable --color #{{ colors.blue }} # and so on...
# ...

Now when we run ix, it'll see that the magic.sh file is something that needs parsing, it'll make sure to replace everything within the #{{ }} characters with the value defined in the configuration, giving us the following file:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# magic.sh

# ...

executable --color blue # and so on...
#...

Notice that it got rid of the ix definitions as well.