✊ grab

A simple bash script to install the latest version of single-executable binaries directly from GitHub.

Philosophy

Imagine the following scenario: you are setting up a server, and want to quickly install couple of useful tools such as eza, fzf, ripgrep and bat. Problem is, this is Debian Stable and none of these are available via apt, or if they are, it’s an ancient, primordial version with half the features missing.

I wrote this script because I wanted around 10% of the functionality of fox with none of the hassle of having to install gh and having to authenticate against github servers.

Usage

The usage for grab is as follows:

Usage: grab <github_user/repo> [executable_name]

  <github_user/repo>   : GitHub repository in the format user/repo
  [executable_name]    : (optional) name of the executable to install (if different from repo name)

Options:
  -h, --help           : Display this help message
  -v, --version        : Display grab version
  -l, --list           : List installed executables
  -ls, --list-simple   : Script friendly list (no formatting)
  -r, --remove <name>  : Uninstall the specified executable

Note: options are only allowed as the first argument.

The installed program must be:

• hosted on github
• the github repository has to have a published release
• the program must be a single executable file
• the archive in the release must be either a .tar.gz, .zip or an .AppImage file

It's not guaranteed to work with every repository, but it works with the handful I have tried.

Grab is by no means production ready. It's just something I put together to make my life easier. Use it at your own risk.

Examples:

    grab junegunn/fzf
    grab eza-community/eza
    grab burntsushi/ripgrep rg
    grab neovim/neovim nvim
    grab pkgforge-dev/ghostty-appimage ghostty

Grab is not smart enough to figure out which released version is correct for your platform, so it will list the available files and ask you which one you want.

You are the user, you press the buttons.

If you accidentally installed the wrong version, just run the command again. Grab will happily overwrite the previous version.

⚠️ Note: in order for appimage packages to work you will need the FUSE library. This should be pre-installed on most modern linux systems. If you don't have it you may need to install it via your package manager. It may be called libfuse, libfuse2 or libfuse2t64 depending on platform.

Precautions

As of 0.4.2 grab has clobbering protection. If a file with the same name as the one you are trying to install already exists in /usr/local/bin (or /usr/bin/ on solaris) then grab will warn you and quit, to prevent over-writing it in case it is a system binary, or something managed by a different package manager.

Scripting Support

Installation

Grab is interactive. It will always ask and wait for a numeric input. If you already know which file from the release you want to install, and where it is on the list, you can use the yes command to pass it in. For example, if you know you want to install the first item from the list you can do it like so:

yes 1 | grab maciakl/grab

⚠️ Note: the ordering of the files may change between releases. Grab always targets the latest release on Github.

Management

If you want to produce a list of packages managed by grab use:

grab -ls

It will produce a script friendly list, one package per line.

Dependencies

Grab requires bash, wget, curl, unzip, tar and sed. Most of these should be installed by default. If you are missing them, you can install them using your package manager. For example, on Debian-based systems you can run:

sudo apt install wget curl unzip

Upgrading Programs Installed with Grab

To uphrade a program to the latest version simply install it again. For example, to upgrade grab run:

grab maciakl/grab

This will automatically overwrite the old version with the new.

Uninstalling Programs Installed with Grab

As of 0.4.0 grab installs programs in /opt/grab and then symlinks the file in /usr/local/bin/ (or /usr/bin on solaris).

To uninstall a program called foo just run:

    grab -r foo

When you do this, grab will:

• verify that /opt/grab/foo exists
• verify that /usr/local/bin/foo (or /usr/bin/foo) exists
• verify that /usr/local/bin/foo (or /usr/bin/foo) is a symlink to /opt/grab/foo
• then and only then, it will delete both

Installing / Upgrading

To install grab for the first time, you can use the following command:

wget -qN https://github.com/maciakl/grab/releases/download/v0.5.3/grab-0.5.3.zip \
-O /tmp/grab.zip \
&& unzip -q -o /tmp/grab.zip -d /tmp \
&& chmod +x /tmp/grab \
&& sudo mkdir -p /opt/grab \
&& sudo mv /tmp/grab /opt/grab \
&& sudo ln -sf /opt/grab/grab /usr/local/bin/grab

⚠️ Note: you need to make sure you have unzip installed before you try. On Solaris, change /usr/local/bin to /usr/bin.

Upgrading

You can upgrade grab via grab itself:

grab maciakl/grab

Uninstalling

To remove grab from your system run:

grab -r grab

⚠️ Note: this will only remove grab itself. All programs it installed will remain in /opt/grab and their symlinks will persist in /usr/local/bin (or /usr/bin on solaris) and will need to be purged manually.