Introduction

Crane is a CLI tool that allows you to create bricks that you can later add to any project.

A brick is an instruction. It can be a file that gets added, a command that executes or lines getting replaced in a target file.

Quick Examples

License brick

Instead of having to look up and copy your desired license from the web, you can create a brick out of it and then run crane add some-license.

Language specific bricks

You can create multiple bricks and combine them behind an alias.

This way, you can easily bootstrap new projects!

$ cargo new my_project && cd my_project
# ...
$ crane add rust
→ Executing 4 bricks
  • mit
  • serde
  • rustfmt
  • rustauthor
# ...

Setup

Install the CLI using cargo (more options coming soon!)

cargo install crane

Shell Completions (optional)

Set up shell completions:

ZSH

# ~/.zshrc
eval "$(crane completion zsh)"

Bash

# ~/.bashrc
eval "$(crane completion bash)"

Fish

# ~/.config/fish/config.fish
crane completion fish | source

Frequently Asked Questions

Feel free to open an issue with any questions. Common questions will then be added here!

Configuration

Crane Config File

The crane config file is located by default at ~/.config/crane/config.toml, but the config directory can be changed by setting the CRANE_CONFIG_DIR env variable.

Brick Directories

You can define where crane should look for bricks. If no paths are set, crane will look for a bricks folder in the same directory as the config is placed.

brick_dirs = [
    "./bricks"
]

Aliases

You can define aliases for multiple bricks.

[[alias]]
name = "rust"
bricks = [ "mit", "rustfmt", "serde" ]

Brick Config

The brick config defines what the brick should do. The file must be called brick.toml and must be located at the root of the brick directory.

To get started, create a new directory in a defined brick directory. Inside, create a file called brick.toml and add a name for your brick.

name = "my_brick_name"

No Config

If you have a brick directory without a brick.toml file, it will still work. By default, this will take the directory name as brick name and add the insert file action.

Shared options

# Name must always be set if a brick.toml exists
name = ""

You can define as many actions as you want. For all actions, you may specify a specific working_dir, which is a relative path from where the action would execute to where it should actually execute.

This is useful if you want to add files from a project root that are located in subfolders.

working_dir = "./src/"

Insert File

[[actions]]
action = "insert_file"

if_file_exists = "append" # or "replace" or "pass"

# Which files should be inserted
sources = [
    "file.txt"
]

If no sources are defined, it will use all files in the brick directory (except the config file).

Modify File

Allows you to modify a specific part of a file. You can do different operations, like replace, append or prepend.

[[actions]]
action = "modify_file"

# The content that will be inserted into the file.
content = "text" # or file (prefix path with file:)

# Where the modification should happen
selector = "[dependencies]" # either text or regex (prefix with re:)

# Modify can be type "append" (default), "prepend" or "replace":
# append text inside file
type = "append"


# Specify which files this action applies to
sources = [
    "file.txt"
]