hermes

Delivers setup and configuration for Ubuntu like a god.

About

hermes configures Ubuntu by installing various packages and (re-)placing configuration files. The setup is mostly unopinionated, non-intrusive, and tries to enhance the out-of-the-box experience of Ubuntu. Optionally, configuration of the GUI is supported. hermes is built for x86_64 (full support) and aarch64 (only non-GUI).

Usage

Note

While optional, I recommend running sudo apt-get --yes update && sudo apt-get --yes upgrade before using hermes.

To download the latest version of hermes, run the following commands:

HERMES_VERSION="$(curl -sSIL -w '%{url_effective}' -o /dev/null "https://github.com/georglauterbach/hermes/releases/latest" | sed 's|.*/||')"
sudo curl --silent --show-error --fail --location --output /usr/local/bin/hermes "https://github.com/georglauterbach/hermes/releases/download/${HERMES_VERSION}/hermes-${HERMES_VERSION}-$(uname -m)-unknown-linux-musl"
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/hermes

To see the help message and install hermes, run the following commands:

hermes --help
hermes

To update hermes, run the following command

hermes --version
hermes --update --non-interactive # works on >= v3.0.0-beta.14

Caution

hermes overwrites files like .bashrc. You should make a backup of your Bash configuration files before running hermes. You can later re-introduce the code from your .bashrc into a new file [1].

Optional Additional Setup

Bash

The setup of Bash is performed by ${HOME}/.bashrc and scripts in ${HOME}/.config/bash/. These setup files can be found here.

If you want to modify the havior of hermes, take a look at {HOME}/.config/bash/20-custom_early.sh. This file contains variables that control the initialization of programs and their overrides as well as other configurations. The "Programs" section below referrs to these variables.

To add code that would normally go to .bashrc, edit ${HOME}/.config/bash/99-cutom_late.sh. These two files are not overwritten by hermes if you run hermes again.

Programs

hermes installs additional programs into ${HOME}/.local/bin/. These programs include:

• Atuin
  • "magical" shell history using SQLite rather than a file
  • enbled with HERMES_INIT_ATUIN
  • CTRL+e (or up-arrow when HERMES_CONFIG_ATUIN_DISABLE_UP_ARROW=false) brings up the history
  • setting HERMES_CONFIG_ATUIN_DB_FILE changes the database file
• bat
  • cat with syntax highlighting and git integration
  • enbled with HERMES_INIT_BAT, override cat with HERMES_OVERRIDE_CAT_WITH_BAT
• ble.sh
  • command line editor written in pure Bash which replaces the default GNU Readline
  • enabled with HERMES_INIT_BLE_SH
• eza
  • fast, modern alternative to ls
  • override ls with HERMES_OVERRIDE_LS_WITH_EZA
• fd
  • fast, modern alternative to find
  • override find with HERMES_OVERRIDE_FIND_WITH_FD
• fzf
  • general-purpose command-line fuzzy finder
  • enabled with HERMES_INIT_FZF
• gitui
  • a fast, modern TUI for git
• ripgrep
  • fast, modern alternative to grep
  • override grep with HERMES_OVERRIDE_GREP_WITH_RIPGREP
• starship
  • minimal, blazing-fast, and infinitely customizable prompt for any shell
  • enbled with HERMES_INIT_STARSHIP
• zoxide
  • smarter cd command
  • enbled with HERMES_INIT_ZOXIDE, override cd with HERMES_OVERRIDE_CD_WITH_ZOXIDE

Changing APT Sources

To change and add APT sources (including PPAs), run hermes with the --change-apt-sources (or -c) flag. This option installs a new ubuntu.sources file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ and adds additonal PPAs for git, neovim, and flatpak.

GUI

Warning

Support for installing a GUI via Regolith Linux is experimental. I am currently working on the Sway integration but lack Wayland capabilities because of an old graphics card of mine.

To set up a GUI, run hermes with the --gui flag. This option installs new PPAs for Regolith Linux, Alacritty, Cryptomator, and Visual Studio Code. hermes installs Regolith Linux, Alacritty and VS Code, and provides a default configuratin for Alacritty.

Supplementary Setup Scripts

You can find additional setup scripts that aid in setting up machines under the ./misc/ directory.

Architecture

hermes is written in the Rust programming language. As it performs a lot of network requests and disk I/O, it utilizes asynchronous programming with the tokio runtime. hermes performs four main tasks:

1. Downloading and placing unversioned configuration files.
2. Downloading and placing versioned configuration files.
3. Setting up APT (optionally) and installing additional programs with it.
4. Installing additional programs by downloading them from GitHub and unpacking them.

All of these tasks are performed asynchronously, which gives the illusion of parallelism (especially in the log). This makes hermes extremely fast.

Most configuration is stored in the data/ directory and is downloaded onto the target system.