Forklift Installers & Cygwin
Forklift was originally design to allow re-use of shell (bash) libraries.
However, it can also be used to install software ranging from from OS packages to Maven JARs, and has support for multiple operating systems.
For example with github jack scripts you can make it so that your repository (as a forklift pallet) can be imported and added to a user’s path by implementing the .forklift/post-import and .forklift/pre-delete scripts.
You can see an example of this in the test pallet that we use during unit testing of the github jack.
Install from Maven
Installing running JARs from maven is a particularly interesting case, as it allows cross-platform non-administrative installation of Java programs. You can see an example of running a command from a Maven JAR and read more about the maven jack if you want to take advantage of this.
Mixed Environments
We’ve recently added a few new projects in g2forge which can help those of you working in mixed environments, particularly with Cygwin in the mix.
- fl-clicommon is a small pallet which automatically installs a few packages we often need. It’s also a good example of single line installers using forklift.
- winpty is fork of the famous winpty which adds an automated single-line installer to make life just a little easier.
The Future
Please note that these project aren’t necessarily permanent, as we’re working on better ways to aggregate package management in forklift. You can see the beginning of the idea, which is essentially that forklift should have a concept of indirection. In the future, we hope to use this to publish both of the above projects though an aggregated repository, which has installers and proxies for a wider range of things. This is why we haven’t worked to push the winpty changes upstream.