A package management application without a package management service.
1.1.7 
This application is a cross-OS solution to creating zip files for distribution and fetching files via HTTP(S). The project's goal is to provide a universal application distribution utility that is language agnostic, operating system independent, and platform independent. The only additional requirement for distributing application packages is online storage on a web server. This application provides all the utilities to retrieve, bundle, and unpackage applications.
Watch the video demo.
biddle is inspired by the incredible awesomeness of NPM, but seeks to accomplish a few additional goals:
- integrity - Downloaded packages will perform a hash comparison before they are unpackaged. If the hashes don't match the zip file will be saved in the downloads directory awaiting a human touch.
- autonomy - Be freed from censorship. There is no central authority here. Host your own publications and manage them as you please from any location and with any name or content you choose.
- privacy - Put biddle behind your firewall or an isolated environment to prevent public access to your applications and data.
- management - There is no dependency hell here. Dependency management will not be automated, but a means to manage and review the status of all installed/published packages is provided.
- freedom - biddle will work everywhere Node.js runs. It can be used with any application written in any language whether binary or text.
Commands are the third command line argument, or second if the node argument is absent. Commands are case insensitive, but values and local paths are case sensitive. All local address are either absolute from the root or relative from the current working directory.
Conveniently lists the supported commands with a brief description.
node biddle commands
Copy files or directories to a different directory.
node biddle copy myFile myOtherDirectory
node biddle copy myDirectory myOtherDirectory
Merely downloads the requested resource and saves it as a file with the same filename. If the filename is not provided in the URI the final directory up to the domain name will become the filename, and if for some reason that doesn't work the default filename is download.xxx.
Download a file to the default location, which is the provided downloads directory.
node biddle get http://google.com
Download a file to an alternate location.
node biddle get http://google.com ../mydirectory
The global command adds an applications's path to the OS path variable so that the application can be run from any location as a command, for example: biddle help from root instead of node biddle help from the local biddle directory. Use the remove option to remove biddle from the path. This command requires use of an administrative console in Windows. For additional requirements see section Global Application Requirements in the documentation.
Allowing global availability to biddle.
node biddle global
Allowing global availability to any other application installed by biddle.
biddle global myApplication
Removing global availability to biddle.
biddle global remove
Removing global availability to any other application installed by biddle.
biddle global myApplication remove
Prints to console a SHA512 hash against a local file.
node biddle hash downloads/myfile.zip
Hash a string by indicating string and a value instead of a file path.
node biddle hash string "my string value"
Prints the readme.md file contents to console in a human friendly way.
No command will still generate the readme data.
node biddle
The default word wrapping is set to 100 characters.
node biddle help
Set a custom word wrap limit.
node biddle help 80
Downloads the requested zip file, but performs a hash comparison before unzipping the file.
node biddle install http://example.com/downloads/application_latest.zip
Will list all installed and/or published applications with their locations and latest versions. It can take the optional argument installed or published to output a specific list or both lists are produced.
Only output the installed list.
node biddle list installed
Only output the published list.
node biddle list published
Output both lists
node biddle list
Allows the internal markdown parser used by the help command to be supplied to a directed file to ease reading of documentation directly from the command line.
The first argument after the command is the address of the file to read.
node biddle markdown applications/example/readme.md
You can also specify a custom word wrap limit. The default is 100.
node biddle markdown applications/example/readme.md 80
Writes a hash file and a zip file with a version number to the publications directory or some other specified location. Applications are required to have a file in their root directory named package.json with properties: name and version.
Create a zip in the default location: ./publications/myApplicationDirectory
node biddle publish ../myApplicationDirectory
Publish to a custom location: ./myAlternateDirectory/myApplicationDirectory
node biddle publish ../myApplicationDirectory myAlternateDirectory
Use quotes if any argument contains spaces:
node biddle publish "c:\program files\myApplicationDirectory"
Removes a file or a directory tree
node biddle remove myDirectory
node biddle remove myFile
Will check whether an installed application is behind the latest published version.
Check the status of all installed applications
node biddle status
Check the status of an application by name
noe biddle status myApplicationName
Run the user acceptance tests for a given application. This command requires a test property in a package.json file.
Run the tests against biddle
node biddle test
Run the tests against an installed application
node biddle test applicationName
Run the tests against a directory in the current location
node biddle test ./directory
Run the tests against a directory in a different location
node biddle test ../../directory
Will delete an installed application by name and remove the application from the installed list.
node biddle uninstall myApplicationName
Will delete a published application by name and version then remove the respective files.
Unpublish an application by version.
node biddle unpublish myApplicationName 1.0.0
Unpublish an application's latest version
node biddle unpublish myApplicationName latest
Remove the published application entirely.
node biddle unpublish myApplicationName all
Unzips a local zipped file.
Unzip to the default location, the supplied downloads directory.
node biddle unzip myZipFile.zip
Unzip to a specified location.
node biddle unzip myZipFile.zip myDirectory
Prints the version number/name of biddle or a named installed application.
If no application is specified the current version of biddle is output.
node biddle version
Output the current version of "myApplication".
node biddle version myApplication
Zips local files or local directories into a zip file.
Zip to the default location, the supplied downloads directory.
node biddle zip ../myApplication
Zip to a specified location.
node biddle zip ../myApplication myCustom/Location/Directory
- This application is written in JavaScript and requires Node.js to run.
- This application makes use of zip utilities provided by operating systems.
- This application requires use of Windows's PowerShell to execute the global coammand in Windows.
- The test command requires Pretty Diff and JSLint as git submodules from Github.