Toolshed improves the Elixir shell experience by adding a number of IEx helpers. This helps when a normal Unix shell prompt isn't easily accessible like on Nerves. It doesn't require Nerves, though, and all Nerves-specific commands aren't even compiled if you're not using it.
Here's a sample list of helpers:
cmd- run a command and print out the outputpingandtcping- check if a remote host is using ICMP or TCPifconfig- list network interfacesweather- get the current weather from wttr.inspeed_test- run a simple speed test to guage network throughputtop- get a list of the top processes and their OTP applications based on CPU and memorytree- list directory contents as a treelsusb- list USB devices
To get a complete list:
iex> h ToolshedTo try it out, add this project to your deps:
def deps do
[
{:toolshed, "~> 0.2"}
]
endRebuild and run in whatever way you prefer. At the IEx prompt, run:
iex> use Toolshed
Toolshed imported. Run h(Toolshed) for more info.
:ok
iex> cmd("echo hello world")
hello world
0
iex> ping "nerves-project.org"
Press enter to stop
Response from nerves-project.org (185.199.108.153): time=4.155ms
Response from nerves-project.org (185.199.108.153): time=10.385ms
Response from nerves-project.org (185.199.108.153): time=12.458ms
iex> top
OTP Application Name or PID Reds/Δ Mbox/Δ Total/Δ Heap/Δ Stack/Δ
nerves_runtime Nerves.Runtime.Kernel.UE 72M/10M 157/-32 384K/-4642 192K/73K 86/52
system_registry SystemRegistry.Global 41M/6134K 0/0 694K/192K 192K/0 35/-11
system_registry SystemRegistry.Processor 61M/6075K 0/0 73K/-1215 73K/0 10/0
system_registry SystemRegistry.Registrat 1623K/293K 1/1 211K/109K 73K/0 10/0
system_registry SystemRegistry.Processor 790K/197K 59/3 1011K/4461 502K/0 38/0
undefined #PID<0.1793.0> 221K/68K 0/0 21K/0 6772/0 504/0
system_registry SystemRegistry.Processor 382K/58K 0/0 16K/-1227 4185/-1354 22/0
ssh #PID<0.1786.0> 133K/52K 0/0 4184/1599 2586/1599 10/0
nerves_init_gadg #PID<0.1432.0> 213K/39K 0/0 192K/101K 73K/0 10/0When you get tired of typing use Toolshed, add it to your
.iex.exs.
Based on using and maintaining Toolshed the past several years, here's what ends up working best:
- Wrappers for OTP functions that make them easier to remember or format their output nicer for interactive use
- Simple implementations of shell commands that have strong muscle memory for Linux users
- Shortcuts to Linux system features (e.g., things that read
/sysor/proc)
This project is not a Busybox replacement project or an effort to replicate all of the functionality in shell commands. Erlang/OTP contains an awful lot of built-in functionality. It's not identical to that provided by shell commands, but if there's an easy way to get at it in an IEx helper, that's what we'd like to do.
Yeah, I miss many Unix commands when I'm at the IEx prompt. Switching to a shell is easy on my laptop, but on Nerves devices, it's a pain. Getting a shell prompt on Nerves is possible, but it's limited due to Nerves not containing a full set of commands and it having to be run through Erlang's job control.
When using Toolshed, the helpers are all imported into the IEx shell context for
ease of use. It looks like they're all defined in the Toolshed module. In
fact, if you don't import Toolshed (or use Toolshed), you can still access
the helpers by calling Toolshed.helper(). The problem defining all of the
helpers in one module is that it makes toolshed.ex very hard to maintain.
We've experimented with many ways of maintaining the helpers, like using
defdelegate and importing all of the helpers into toolshed.ex. There were
several problems with these ways including function docs not being in the
expected place, code being duplicated, and manual steps. The most annoying issue
was that keeping helpers in lots of .beam files had an impact on load time on
Nerves devices. The load-time issue is being addressed in OTP 26 more
generally.
The end result is that we finally settled on merging all of the helpers at compile-time. The downside to this is that line numbers are wrong in stack traces. Given the history of this issue, this seemed like a good compromise.
Definitely. There's so much that I'd like to explore, but time gets in the way. I'm not sold on many decisions that I made, but something was better than nothing. Please help me improve this or make your own IEx helpers library. I'm quite happy to use it too or pull it in as a dependency.
This isn't a normal hex.pm library. Use it for the helpers. If you want some code, copy and paste it or incorporate it into a library. I'd like the flexibility to change the API to improve interactive use.
This also isn't a question, and you've now made me regret naming the project
toolshed. Please file your grievances
here.