chim

Cross-platform binary shims with optional remote fetching.

Quickstart (make an automatic fetching node.js wrapper)

Install chim: (see docs for alternate install methods)

$ cargo install chim $ chim --version chim 1.0.0

Create a chim in ./bin/node:

```toml

!/usr/bin/env chim

[macos-arm64] url = 'https://nodejs.org/dist/v18.7.0/node-v18.7.0-darwin-arm64.tar.xz' path = 'node-v18.7.0-darwin-arm64/bin/node' checksum = 'ef593cbb3a3f0aae9879b74a7850d794abab26178aa5e0f67ff182894811e6f0'

[linux-x64] url = 'https://nodejs.org/dist/v18.7.0/node-v18.7.0-linux-x64.tar.xz' path = 'node-v18.7.0-linux-x64/bin/node' checksum = '8bc6a1b9deaed2586d726fc62d4bee9c1bfc5a30b96c1c4cff7edd15225a11a2'

[windows-x64] url = 'https://nodejs.org/dist/v18.7.0/node-v18.7.0-win-x64.zip' path = 'node-v18.7.0-win-x64\node.exe' checksum = '9c0abfe32291dd5bed717463cb3590004289f03ab66011e383daa0fcec674683' ```

Now make it executable and run it:

$ chmod +x ./bin/node $ ./bin/node -v v18.7.0

The tarball is fetched once from nodejs.org, extracted into a cache directory, then reused on future ./bin/node calls.

What am I supposed to do with this?

Commit a set of chims into a /bin directory in your project's repo. Other people can just add this directory to their $PATH and won't have to manually install each utility. Also run the chims in CI/CD so you have dev/prod parity with your tools!

Diagram

Here's a flow chart of a chim execution:

mermaid graph TD; init --> parse_chim[parse chim file: bin/node]; parse_chim -->|requests: https://nodejs.org/node-v20...tar.xz| already_dl{Already in chim cache?} already_dl -->|yes| run_binary; already_dl -->|no| fetch_archive[download tarball]; fetch_archive -->|download node-v20.macos.arm.tar.xz| validate_checksum[validate checksum]; validate_checksum -->|sha256sum node-v20.macos.arm.tar.xz| extract_archive[extract archive to cache directory]; extract_archive -->|tar -xzf node-v20.macos.arm.tar.xz| run_binary;