Toolset

toolset is a lightweight utility for managing project-specific tools like linters, formatters, and code generators. It ensures that your development tools remain up-to-date and allows you to specify exact tool versions for consistent, reproducible builds.

Key Features

• Centralized Tool Management: Easily manage and update tools like linters, formatters, and code generators within your project.
• Reproducible Builds: Ensure consistent results by locking tool versions in your project configuration.
• Automatic Updates: Keep your tools up-to-date with a single command, avoiding manual version checks and upgrades.

Use Cases

When developing software, you often rely on various tools—such as linters, formatters, and test runners—that are critical for maintaining code quality. These tools are frequently updated with new features or fixes. To maintain stability and ensure that everyone working on the project uses the same toolset, you need a way to lock in specific tool versions.

This is where toolset comes in:

• Version Management: Specify exact tool versions to avoid breaking changes during updates.
• Easy Upgrades: When you're ready, upgrade all tools to their latest versions with a single command.
• Reproducibility: Enable consistent behavior across machines, making builds and code checks more reliable.

Installation

You can install toolset using either Go or Homebrew:

Option 1: Go Install

go install github.com/kazhuravlev/toolset/cmd/toolset@latest

Option 2: Homebrew

brew install kazhuravlev/toolset/toolset

Usage

toolset allows you to initialize a configuration, add tools, install specific versions, and run or upgrade them. Below are the basic commands:

Initialize Toolset

Create a toolset.json configuration file in the specified directory:

# Init an empty project
toolset init .
# ...or from existing one.
toolset init --copy-from git+https://gist.github.com/3f16049ce3f9f478e6b917237b2c0d88.git:/sample-toolset.json

Add Tools

Direct tools

Explicitly add tool to your configuration. They have an priority on top of includes.

# Add the latest version (automatically resolves to the most recent version)
toolset add go github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/cmd/golangci-lint
# ... or with @latest
toolset add go github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/cmd/golangci-lint@latest
# Add a specific version
toolset add go github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/cmd/[email protected]

Copy from source

When you bootstrap a new repository and want to have a copy of the .toolset.json file from an existing repository.

# ... from local file
toolset add --copy-from path/to/another/.toolset.json
# ... from remote http
toolset add --copy-from https://gist.githubusercontent.com/kazhuravlev/3f16049ce3f9f478e6b917237b2c0d88/raw/44a2ea7d2817e77e2cd90f29343788c864d36567/sample-toolset.json
# ... from git repo (by ssh)
toolset add --copy-from git+ssh://[email protected]:3f16049ce3f9f478e6b917237b2c0d88.git:/sample-toolset.json
# ... from git repo (by https)
toolset add --copy-from git+https://gist.github.com/3f16049ce3f9f478e6b917237b2c0d88.git:/sample-toolset.json

Include source

The included source will be explicitly registered. This URL will be added to your .toolset.json file.

# ... from local file
toolset add --include /path/to/.toolset.json
# ... from remote http
toolset add --include https://gist.githubusercontent.com/kazhuravlev/3f16049ce3f9f478e6b917237b2c0d88/raw/44a2ea7d2817e77e2cd90f29343788c864d36567/sample-toolset.json
# ... from git repo (by ssh)
toolset add --include git+ssh://[email protected]:3f16049ce3f9f478e6b917237b2c0d88.git
# ... from git repo (by https)
toolset add --include git+https://gist.github.com/3f16049ce3f9f478e6b917237b2c0d88.git

Add tags to tools

Add one or more tags to each tool. It will allow you to install only selected tools. Tools that have a tag can be filtered in toolset sync and toolset upgrade. See the docs bellow.

# Add linter to group `linters` and `ci`
toolset add --tags linters,ci go github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/cmd/golangci-lint
# Add tools to group `ci`
toolset add --tags ci go github.com/jstemmer/go-junit-report/v2@latest
toolset add --tags ci go github.com/boumenot/gocover-cobertura

Install tools

Ensure all specified tools are installed or updated to the defined versions:

# Make sure that all tools installed with a correct version.
toolset sync
# ...do it only for some set of tools
toolset sync --tags linters

By default, tools are installed into ./bin/tools.

Run a tool

Execute any installed tool with its corresponding arguments. For example, to run golangci-lint:

toolset run golangci-lint run --fix ./...

Upgrade tools

To upgrade all tools to their latest available versions, run:

# Upgrade all tools
toolset upgrade
# Upgrade only specific tools
toolset upgrade --tags ci

This command ensures all tools in your toolset.json configuration are updated to the latest version.

Get an absolute path to installed tool

To get an abs path to installed tool you can just use a toolset which:

# Install some tool. For example - goimports
toolset add go golang.org/x/tools/cmd/goimports
toolset sync
# Get an abs path to installed tool
toolset which goimports

This command returns an abs path to goimports like that:

/abs/path/to/project/bin/tools/.goimports___v0.21.0/goimports

Remove installed tool

You can use toolset remove in very similar order like toolset add or toolset run. This operation will remove requested binaries and some meta info.

# Install some tool. For example - goimports
toolset add go golang.org/x/tools/cmd/goimports
toolset sync
# Remove tool by calling
toolset remove goimports

Examples

Here’s an example of a directory with the toolset. To try it out, follow these steps:

Install the toolset and run:

git clone [email protected]:kazhuravlev/toolset.git
cd toolset/example
# Install all tools
toolset sync
# ... and check installed tools
ls ./bin/tools
# Run installed tool
toolset run gt --repo ../ tag last
# List installed tools
toolset list
# List installed tools that was never used
toolset list --unused

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to open issues or submit pull requests to improve toolset.

Questions and Answers

Which files should be added into git index?

• .toolset.json should be added into git index. This is like go.mod or package.json.
• .toolset.lock.json should be added into git index. This is like go.sum or another lock files.
• bin/tools dir should be excluded from index, because this dir will contain a binaries.

Is that possible to change directory that contains a binary files?

Yes. You can change it in your .toolset.json.

I have a strange behaviour. What I should do to fix that?

Main command - toolset sync. This should fix the all problems. In case when it is not fixed - create an issue.