Hi all, I built a CLI tool that allows you to seamlessly install software from GitHub release assets, similar to how your system's package manager installs software.
It works by exploiting common patterns among GitHub releases across different open-source software such as naming conventions and file layouts to fetch proper release assets for your system and then downloading the proper asset onto your machine via the GitHub API. Parm will then extract the files, find the proper binaries, and then add them to your PATH. Parm can also check for updates and uninstall software, and otherwise manages the entire lifecycle of all software installed by Parm.
Parm is not meant to replace your system's package manager. It is instead meant as an alternative method to install prebuilt software off of GitHub in a more centralized and simpler way.
It's currently in a pre-release stage, and there's a lot of features I want to add. I'm currently working (very slowly) on some new features, so if this sounds interesting to you, check it out! It's completely free and open-source and is currently released for Linux/macOS. I would appreciate any feedback.
The one or two commands that I think would make it useful, it doesn't have.
1. a command that lists the releases for a repo
2. a command that lists the info for a release
Without these, for:
> To get around this, specify the asset name with the --asset flag when installing with the --release or --pre-release flag(s).
I'll have to go to the Github release manually anyway, and when I'm there I could just copy the URL and download it.
or... why not let the user pick release and asset from a list when doing "parm install (username)/(repo)"?
> Don't actually try to install Parm using Parm. It is unsupported and may or may not work how it was intended. Use the install script in the README instead.
I find this warning pretty funny actually.
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