edittool

Dogfood implementation of editlib.

But also useful for bootstrap provisioning in a idempotent way.

Example use

cat /tmp/extra_host_config
1.1.1.1 my.special.server.example.com
sudo edittool -edit /etc/hosts -ensure /tmp/extra_host_config
cat /etc/hosts
##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1 localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1             localhost
# EDITTOOL GENERATED DO NOT EDIT
1.1.1.1 my.special.server.example.com
# EDITTOOL GENERATED DO NOT EDIT

Run the same command as many times as you want there should be no side effects.

Use in scripting

Example 1.

#!/bin/bash
set -e -u
# ...
# set up /tmp/extra_host_config
# ...
sudo edittool -edit /etc/hosts -ensure /tmp/extra_host_config || [ $? -eq 2 ]

Example 2.

#!/bin/bash
set -e -u
# ...
# set up /tmp/my_service_extra_config
# ...
sudo edittool -edit /etc/my_service.conf -ensure /tmp/my_service_extra_config -reload 'sudo systemctl restart my_service'

Return values

Without the -reload flag.

• 0 - nothing happened
• 2 - changes were made
• anything else - error

With the -reload flag.

• 0 - nothing happened / reload succeed
• anything else - error / reload return code

Potential uses

Edit files before real provisioning kicks-in (especially services or configuration files without conf.d style configuration), like:

• /etc/fstab
• /etc/hosts
• /etc/resolv.conf
• $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys
• etc...