Gaudi

Gaudi: Craft Your Perfect Dev Environment

🏗️ Automate your machine setup 🎨 Customize with templates 🚀 From fresh install to fully equipped in minutes

As a developer or tech enthusiast, you’ve probably experienced the frustration of setting up a new machine. Whether it’s for a fresh install of the operating system or a brand-new device, the process of reinstalling your go-to applications, configuring development environments, and getting everything to run smoothly can feel like a tedious chore. I know this pain all too well. That’s why I created Gaudi—a tool designed to make setting up a new machine efficient, consistent, and hassle-free.

The Problem: Time-Consuming Setup

Anyone who's had to reconfigure a new system from scratch understands the pain. You’re faced with hours of:

• Installing software and tools (brew, npm, mas or others)
• Customizing system preferences
• Setting up your favorite applications
• Re-configuring settings to match your old system

It’s a repetitive, manual process, and even worse, there’s a chance you’ll forget one or two critical steps, leaving your environment not quite right. Multiply that by each new device, and you’re looking at a major time sink.

Gaudi is a bash command line tool that helps installing/setting-up machines by defining lists of software packages to be installed.

The main motivation behind gaudi is:

• Have a clean reproducible way to set up a machine from scratch by installing all the software/packaged needed
• A way to share machine setups between users with templates

Note: Gaudi has been designed to serve both Linux and OSX but have been optimised and tested on OSX

Installation

gaudi is installed by running the following commands in your terminal. You can install this via the command-line with either curl or wget, whichever is installed on your machine.

bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/g-udi/gaudi/master/install.sh)"

You can also manually clone the repo and then run the setup.sh

gaudi has been also designed mainly to work with bash so running the setup with bash rather than . or sh is advised

What does gaudi do?

gaudi is a bash script that automates the installation and setup of software on a machine. It provides a way to define lists of software packages to be installed and handles the installation process for each package.

• Install the prerequisites for the OS ^{OS detection is done automatically}: This ensures that the needed tools are installed to run gaudi. For OSX this includes: Homebrew, mas, git.
• Configure SSH: Ensure your SSH keys are set up and configured so you can clone easily from code repositories e.g., Github especially if you have your templates in a private one
• Configure Gaudi: Clone the gaudi templates repository and set it up
• Install shell helpers: Suggest installing shell helpers like gaudi-bash or oh-my-zsh
• Install the software list: Install the software list from the template files specified in the templates repository
• Install dotfiles: Install the dotfiles from the template files specified in the templates repository
• Install extras: Install the extras from the template files specified in the templates repository
• Configure the machine: Configure the machine to your liking be it OSX or Debian specific settings

Behind the Scenes

Folder and File Structure

• bin
  • colors.sh: Variables and functions that are used to print colors to the terminal.
  • commands.sh: Aliases to point to different commands if they are installed in different locations e.g., brew
  • helpers.sh: Various helper functions that are used to perform various tasks.
  • installer.sh: This file contains the main logic for installing the software lists.
• configs
  • configure-gaudi.sh: Downloads the gaudi templates repository
  • configure-ssh.sh: Configures SSH on the machine

• lib

  Operating System specific scripts

  • install-pre-requisites.sh: Installs the software lists from the templates repository
  • cleanup.sh: Cleans up the machine after the software lists have been installed

  ---

  Common scripts

  • install-shell-helpers.sh: Installs shell helpers like gaudi-bash or oh-my-zsh
  • install-software.sh: Installs the software lists from the templates
  • install-configurations: Installs the configurations from the templates repository. They can be any kind of configuration files e.g., templates, dotfiles, etc.
  • <install-dotfile.sh>: Installs the dotfiles from the templates repository
• install.sh: This file is used to install gaudi.
• setup.sh: This file is used to setup gaudi.

The Installation Process

The software lists to be processed are specified in a softwareLists array in the install.sh file as below:

softwareLists=(
    "debian|apt-get::sudo apt-get -y --force-yes install"
    "*|brew::brew_install_or_upgrade"
    "osx|mas::mas install"
    "osx|cask::brew install --cask"
    "*|npm::npm install -g"
    "*|pip::pip3 install --upgrade --user --ignore-installed six"
    "*|go::go get"
    "*|gem::gem_install_or_update install"
)

Each line in the array is made of 3 elements:

1. The operating system to run the command on
2. The command to run
3. The arguments to pass to the command

For example, the following line:

"*|brew::brew_install_or_upgrade"

This will run the command brew_install_or_upgrade on any operating system.

"osx|mas::mas install"

This will run the command mas install on a OSX based system.

Hooks

Hooks are scripts that are run before or after the software lists are installed. They are located in the hooks folder.

Hooks must have the following name format:

pre.software-list.hooks.sh
post.software-list.hooks.sh

Combining hooks with template based installation allows for a high level of control over the installation process.

Templates

An example templates are located in the gaudi-templates repository.

They are basically shell scripts that install/configure/setup/... whatever you want in your machine.

Backup: Generate your list of installed software automatically

You can generate a list of your installed software by running the following command:

gaudi backup

This will generate a list of your installed software and save it to the backup folder. You can edit the set of software to be installed by editing the softwareLists array in the install.sh file.