kut

README

kut

A GUI to help make running commands easier.

Background

Motivation

This project aims to help in the following scenarios

• You are a developer and you have long commands that you repeated type, and you need a easier way to compose the commands.

• You are a developer and you are often asked to help analysts fix their computer because it requires running a few commands and the analysts are not comfortable dealing with terminals, but of course the command is so simple it's not worth making a UI for it.

Approach

• Use Go instead of Node or Python to allow easy installation on Windows.

• Pacakge all frontend resources in binary to allow minimal setup.

• Group each functional group as a "Menu" which is a defined by a YAML file saved in ~/.kut/menus, e.g.

name: windows-shell
help: Collection of common windows shell commands
actions:
- name: ping
  help: Ping a party in network
  template: ping {{.host}}
  params:
  - name: host
    help: Host to ping
    value: google.com
- name: ip
  help: Show my ip adresses
  template: ipconfig

• The user executes an Action by providing Params, which is rendered into the Template (Go Template) and executed in a shell environment.

• The user can view the results of the execution in the frontend.

Web Mode Usage

Installation

• Download a distributable zip from Github releases.

• Unzip the package and move the executables to a place where they can be executed.

Ingesting Menu

• Run kutd or kutd.exe or create a shortcut to run. This is the web server and message exchange server and it needs to keep running.

• Visit http://localhost:7171 .

• At bottom of the page, locate the Ingest Menu form, enter into source

  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bettercallshao/kut-menus/master/windows-shell.yaml
  

  or

  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bettercallshao/kut-menus/master/linux-shell.yaml
  

  Note source could be either a http link or a local file.

• The official menus are found in https://github.com/bettercallshao/kut-menus .

• Press ingest to observe a new Menu item.

Starting Channel

A predefined number of Channels are created in the web server (Master), a command runner (Executor) can connect to a channel to create an execution environment to run commands.

• Run kut or kut.exe in the desired working directory with arguments to claim a Channel with a Menu name and default Channel 0, e.g.

  kut start --menu linux-shell
  

• On Windows, this is best done by creating a shortcut to kutd.exe on the Desktop, then editing the properties to specify a desired starting directory and arguments. Name the shortcut properly and use a lot of them.

• kut is built with github.com/urfave/cli and help is available with

  kut -h
  

• This needs to keep running for Actions to execute.

Executing Action

• Visit http://localhost:7171 and select Channel 0.

• Observe the list of Actions, select one.

• Click Execute and observe output at the bottom.

Standalone Usage

The kut client can be run standalone to render and execute commands based on commandline input.

• After installation, menu can be ingested locally for standalone consumption by using the ingest command, e.g.

  kut ingest --source https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bettercallshao/kut-menus/master/linux-shell.yaml
  

• Actions in menus are listed in the help page of kut.

  kut -h
  

• Run a action by using the menu name as the primary command, action name as sub command, and parameters as flags, e.g.

  kut linux-shell ping --host twitter.com
  

Building

• Install Go.

• Install go-assets-builder.

  go install github.com/jessevdk/go-assets-builder
  

• Get source code. This uses go mod so it lives out of the go path.

  git clone git@github.com:bettercallshao/kut.git
  

• [Windows] Install cygwin. cygwin is the only make environment tested, others may work as well.

• Make distributable package.

  GOOS=windows GOARCH=amd64 make clean package
  

• Locate the zip files in dist.