Shelter Programmers 2025 11 17 https://shelter.sirref.org/logs/ logs /logs/ Shelter Logs Weekly, or there abouts, updates on the development of Shelter. Patrick Ferris 2025 12 9 https://shelter.sirref.org/shelter-log-002/ shelter-log-002 /shelter-log-002/ @ How? A quick update on a new feature that was added recently, the @ how meta-command. provenance of a given file. How that file came to be and who and what processes have interacted with it since. Shelter now has a command for asking exactly that of any given file in the system. hello.txt echo world > world.txt cat world.txt > hello.txt @ how hello.txt]]> The previous snippet of shell script will output: hello.txt Ran cat world.txt > hello.txt (read: "world.txt")]]> There are plenty of optimisations and improvements to make, but this is a nice first step to showing the kinds of feature you get when programming with Shelter. Shelter Programmers 2025 11 16 https://shelter.sirref.org/shelter-log-001/ shelter-log-001 /shelter-log-001/ Import statements Welcome to the first Shelter log! In this log I will explain the work I have been doing to add an @ import meta-command. The syntax thus far is relatively straightforward. ]]> There are a few key principles underlying @ import. It should be at least as expressive as Docker's COPY ... command. It should deal with a wider variety of import sources. In addition to local https:// archives over ssh etc. Imports, where possible, should be catalogued and shared across sessions. Shelter Programmers 2025 11 16 URIs as Sources branch already allows users to import local files and directories into their session. For example: By allowing arbitrary URIs in the import command, we hope to force users away from downloading data via curl or python scripts. Lifting these side-effectful imports into Shelter allows us to manage the data in a much cleaner fashion. Shelter Programmers 2025 11 16 Scripts as Sources One idea I had was to allow users to invoke scripts as there "import source". Something like: And using the same eBPF tracing we use during normal execution we can capture a fairly good idea of the tools and files needed to perform an import. Shelter Programmers 2025 11 16 Sharing Imports One example of better data management is that Shelter imports can be When a user imports some data, they can optionally name that piece of data. For example: Shelter stores that away and makes a link between the name, the URI and the underlying data. A user may then import the same piece of data into a different session by simply writing: intent via the naming scheme, it makes it possible to then version the data and have a means by which to update said data, one could imagine: Which will retry the original URI and see if the data has changed, or if it has not. There is an implicit versioning number that users can specify in the name should they choose to. References Context Backlinks The Shelter Developers 2025 7 21 https://shelter.sirref.org/index/ index /index/ Shelter Welcome to Shelter's documentation. Shelter is a metashell. A tool for managing shell sessions in a more reproducible way. To get started with Shelter, you can read the getting started tutorial. For a more thorough understanding of what Shelter offers and how to use it, then please follow the documentation. 2025 7 21 https://shelter.sirref.org/shelter-0001/ shelter-0001 /shelter-0001/ About Shelter's Documentation Shelter's documentation is written in using Forester via Graft. The main ethos is to divide the documentation into fairly small, standalone chunks. These can then be pieced together into documentation pages that are tightly linked. For reference documentation, we have: The Shelterfile syntax -- the syntax for shelterfiles, a mishmash of Dockerfiles and shell scripts. These are useful for setting up branches for developement The available meta-commands -- these extend past shell scripts and allow users to access the more interesting parts of Shelter like @ undo or @ merge <branch> for example. The development logs -- a set of developer logs about the activity on shelter. Related The Shelter Developers 2025 7 21 https://shelter.sirref.org/index/ index /index/ Shelter Welcome to Shelter's documentation. Shelter is a metashell. A tool for managing shell sessions in a more reproducible way. To get started with Shelter, you can read the getting started tutorial. For a more thorough understanding of what Shelter offers and how to use it, then please follow the documentation. 2025 7 21 https://shelter.sirref.org/shelter-0001/ shelter-0001 /shelter-0001/ About Shelter's Documentation Shelter's documentation is written in using Forester via Graft. The main ethos is to divide the documentation into fairly small, standalone chunks. These can then be pieced together into documentation pages that are tightly linked. For reference documentation, we have: The Shelterfile syntax -- the syntax for shelterfiles, a mishmash of Dockerfiles and shell scripts. These are useful for setting up branches for developement The available meta-commands -- these extend past shell scripts and allow users to access the more interesting parts of Shelter like @ undo or @ merge <branch> for example. The development logs -- a set of developer logs about the activity on shelter. Contributions