dynalias

dynalias is a collection of POSIX compliant scripts designed to simplify alias management.

To achieve this, aliases are stored in files, which contain code that is executed when the alias is called.

Setup

dynalias uses two directories:

• ~/.dynalias: contains the project's scripts.
• ~/.config/dynalias: contains the alias files and the .output file (created and updated automatically).

First, clone the project on ~/.dynalias:

git clone https://github.com/kerudev/dynalias.git ~/.dynalias

Then, paste the following on you shell's rc file:

alias dynalias="~/.dynalias/dynalias.sh"
# dynalias refresh	# uncomment to update aliases when opening console

# this line is optional, just for convenience to source your aliases later
export DYNALIAS_OUT="$HOME/.config/dynalias/.output"

if [ -f "$DYNALIAS_OUT" ]; then
    . "$DYNALIAS_OUT"
fi

How to use

Run dynalias set <name> to create an alias, which can't contain function declarations because alias files are sourced, meaning they are read line by line and writing a function will result in a syntax error.

After creating an alias, you need to source the output file to refresh your current session's aliases by running . "$DYNALIAS_OUT".

You can also run dynalias help to get the full list of available commands.

Examples

A simple alias that just runs git add .:

# This will create the 'add' file using $EDITOR
$ dynalias set add

# ~/.config/dynalias/add
git add .

# The alias will be stored like this on .output
alias add='. ~/.config/dynalias/add'

After running . "$DYNALIAS_OUT":

$ add   # This executes 'git add .'

Aliases can be more complex and take arguments too:

# This will create the 'commit' file using $EDITOR
$ dynalias set commit

# ~/.config/dynalias/commit
if [[ -z $1 ]]; then
    echo "Missing commit message"
    exit 1
fi

git commit -m "$1"

# The alias will be stored like this on .output
alias commit='~/.config/dynalias/commit'

After running . "$DYNALIAS_OUT":

$ commit "..."          # This executes 'git commit -m "..."'

$ commit                # This prints a message and exits with 1
Missing commit message