kpm Scripts

The Koding Package Manager is a binary (the kpm bin), and a series of installation and removal scripts. The scripts install programs and frameworks with as minimal setup as possible, making them entirely beginner friendly.

This document and repository are mainly for developers of the Installer Scripts that the Koding Package Manager uses. If you're looking for a beginner friendly installation and usage guide, click here.

Installing the Bin

To install the bin, run the following command.

curl -sSL learn.koding.com/kpm.sh | sh

For more detailed instructions, see the user guide.

Installing Packages

Packages can be listed and installed with the following commands.

kpm list
kpm install PACKAGENAME

For more detailed instructions, see the user guide.

Writing Scripts

You can add an Installer and Uninstaller script for just about anything.
Simply make a pull request against this repo and placing your script into a new folder with the name of your script, eg ./scriptname (where scriptname is the name of your script), and name the script ./scriptname/installer or ./scriptname/uninstaller.

You can also place config files, zip files, or anything else you need in that folder as well. Just make sure to keep the names installer and uninstaller reserved for the actual install/uninstall scripts.

With that said, your script must adhere to various standards to ensure a consistent user experience between all of the scripts. Below, we outline the major areas that your script must adhere to.

Language

Scripts can be written in any language that is pre-installed on Koding VMs, but a shell language (Fish, Bash, etc) is recommended. Ensure that your script has a shebang hash at the top pointing to an environment variable, and kpm will use that as the run process for the script.

NOTE: Fish is currently required for scripts, but this requirement will be removed in the near future.

Naming

The name of the script is very important, as the name of the script directly correlates to the name of the command. Every script seen in the ./foo/installer format is accessible from kpm install foo.

For example, if you named your script hello-world, then it could be installed with:

kpm install hello-world

Likewise, file extensions such as .fish, .bash, and .sh should not be used as they would have to be part of the command as well. Such as:

kpm install hello-world.fish

This is unneeded, so it should not be used in the name of your script.

Minimal Configuration

Because these scripts are intended for absolute beginners, we cannot prompt for a full range of configuration options. Every prompt should be thought about carefully, and used only if required.

Ideally, each script will have no more than two or three prompts.

Checking Edge Cases

A series of checks should be done at the beginning of every script. Some can be substituted where applicable.

• Is this package already installed?
• Is the user logged in as the proper user? (Ie, not root)
• Does the user have enough storage space to install the package?
• Does the user have requirements (mysql, etc) installed?

If any of your checks fail, the script should exit immediately. It's best to exit before any changes to the system are made, whenever possible, so that a bad environment is an unchanged environment.

Likewise, if any of your installation steps exit with any sort of failure, it is important that the script exits with a meaningful, but concise, error message.

Installations should not continue if the environment is not as expected.

Message Formatting

Where applicable, messages should be copied from existing scripts for a consistent user experience.

Exit Statuses

After each command, you should check for a non-zero exit status. After informing the user that something went wrong (in a beginner friendly way!), you should exit with the same status that the command exited with. This may mean logging the error into a temporary variable, and logging it.

Fish Shell Example:

sudo apt-get install foo
or begin
  set -l err $status
  echo "Error: Failed to install foo"
  exit $err
end

In this Fish Shell example, we run the command like normal. After the command runs, or is triggered if the $status is not-zero. begin starts a codeblock.

In the begin codeblock, we store the $status into the err variable, because echo will set $status back to zero. We then exit $err.

Debug Messages

In kpm, STDERR is considered a debug stream. Print errors, or any debug information desired. By default, kpm does not display this debug information to the user.

If a command fails, as in the exit status example above, we should log a beginner-friendly message to the user to inform them of the error. Don't bother including detailed information here, save that for the debug print. You can print to STDERR (debug), as seen below:

echo "This is a debug message" >&2

The >&2 syntax forwards the output of echo to STDERR. Kpm will then record this information depending on user configuration.