Creating a package

Creating a remote file

How to create a package

Finally, to make your package installable, all you need it to have a GitHub release (not a draft) for it.

  1. Make sure your repo has a release with attached assets. Right now only binary executables and scripts (Eg. bash scripts) are supported. They can be contained in a zip/tarball or be at the root level.

If your package is an executable, make sure your release has the binaries with the appropriate name for the OS and the architecture. It doesn’t have to be perfect as fox will try to fuzzy search for the best match. Normally this are created for you if you use a build tool (eg. goreleaser)

Example:

- mypkg_darwin_amd64_v1
- mypkg_darwin_arm64
- mypkg_linux_386
- mypkg_linux_amd64_v1
- mypkg_linux_arm64
- mypkg_windows_386.exe
- mypkg_windows_amd64_v1.exe
- mypkg_windows_arm64.exe

If your package is a script. Just have the script file in the repository with the name you choose as your executableName in the YAML entry. Take a look at rand-stand as an example.

Alternatively, you can have the script file in the assets with the name you choose as your executableName in the YAML entry. This is useful if you don’t have the final script file in the repo contents, as it may get build in some sort of bundling phase (eg: you use emacs to write your script using literate programing and have the final script created with some command).

Example:

- myscript.sh
  1. Add your package to your remote file following the format described in the example on the “Creating a remote” section:

Example of your remote YAML file:

packages:
- path: me/bff
executableName: bff
type: binary
dependsOn:
  - curl
- path: company-name/a-tool
executableName: tool
type: script
dependsOn:
  - wget
  - zsh

And that’s it! Now you can run:

fox install tool

Can I test how my package will be installed before adding it to the file?

Of course, you can! In your ~/.fox/repositories.yaml file, there is a section called packages. That section is a list of packages. It follows the exact format described above.

You can use this section to add you package locally and test how fox will install it. Very useful if you want to test that you did everything right when creating your release.

Example:

In your ~/.fox/repositories.yaml:

packages:
  - path: me/my-thing
  executableName: my-thing
  type: binary
  dependsOn:
    - curl

And now you can run the following to make sure you did every thing right:

fox install my-thing
← Creating a remote
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