Bash Aliases

When you are using a shell like bash you are likely using a lot of commands. These commands can be quite long. A useful way to deal with commands that you use a lot is to make a shortcut to use them. This way you have to type less.

In this post we will look at how to make these shortcuts for bash and how you might organize them. We will also look at how to make specific shortcuts for 2 programs.

• Bash shortcuts
• Git shortcuts
• AWS cli shortcuts
• Reuse shortcuts over multiple machines

Bash shortcuts

To create a shortcut in bash you can add the following line to your ~/.bashrc file.

alias ll="ls -la"

This means that if you execute ll in the terminal the ls -la command will be executed. To see these change have effect you first have to relogin or execute:

source ~/.bashrc

Organizing the shortcuts

The ~/.bashrc file can quickly become cluttered when all the shortcuts are places inside this file. To solve this we have multiple options. For example: we can create one seperate file to put all the aliases in or we can have a folder which contains multiple files of aliases.

In the following example we will create a folder to seperate all our shortcuts over multiple files. First add the following lines to the ~/.bashrc folder to have it read all the files from the folder. and load these

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# User specific aliases and functions
if [ -d ~/.bashrc.d ]; then
    for rc in ~/.bashrc.d/*; do
        if [ -f "$rc" ]; then
            . "$rc"
        fi
    done
fi

Create the ~/.bashrc.d folder with

mkdir ~/.bashrc.d

In this directory you can create as many files as you want to order you shortcuts. Lets for example create a file for our docker shortcuts.

touch ~/.bashrc.d/docker.bashrc

In this file we will add our shortcuts. Your shortcuts don’t have to be created with alias. It is also possible to use a bash function. To see how this works we add the following lines to ~/.bashrc.d/docker.bashrc.

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docker_rmc_a () (
    docker rm -f $(docker ps -aq)
)

after we execute source our ~/.bashrc we can use the shortcut. The shortcut removed all docker containers on the system.

docker_rmc_a

Git shortcuts

Git offers us the option to have special git aliases. In the ~/.gitconfig you can add the following:

[alias]
        fp = push --force-with-lease

This will allow you to force push you code with the following command:

git fp

Organizing the git shortcuts

It is possible to have the git shortcuts in a different file and include this file in the ~/.gitconfig. Create a file called .gitconfig.aliases:

touch ~/.gitconfig.aliases

Move the alias section from ~/.gitconfig to ~/.gitconfig.aliases. In the ~/.gitconfig add the following:

[include]
    path = ~/.gitconfig.aliases

It is also possible to only load a git configuration file based a condition. For example if the git repo you are in is in the ~/Documents/work/ directory. The trailing slash means that git will add ** and thus it will work for all the repo’s under this directory. In code it looks like this:

[includeIf "gitdir:~/Documents/work/"]
    path = ~/.gitconfig.aliases

AWS cli shortcuts

The AWS cli offers you the option to create AWS specific shortcuts. To create these you create the ~/.aws/cli/alias file.

touch ~/.aws/cli/alias

In the file you can include the following code:

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[toplevel]
#https://github.com/awslabs/awscli-aliases/blob/master/alias

whoami = sts get-caller-identity

docker-ecr-login =
  !f() {
    region=$(aws configure get region)
    endpoint=$(aws ecr get-authorization-token --region $region --output text --query authorizationData[].proxyEndpoint)
    passwd=$(aws ecr get-authorization-token --region $region --output text --query authorizationData[].authorizationToken | base64 --decode | cut -d: -f2)
    docker login -u AWS -p $passwd $endpoint
  }; f

The top link is for an alias file that AWS developers use them self. The 2 other commands are from the AWS file and do the following:

• Show which IAM identity is calling
• Login to AWS ECR (container registry)

You can use them in the following way:

aws docker-ecr-login

Reuse shortcuts over multiple machines

If you have multiple machines on which you would like to use them same shortcuts you can do the following:

• Create a git repo
• Save the files in there
• Create simlinks to the files in the git repository for example:

ln -s ~/Documents/configs/.aws.alias ~/.aws/cli/alias

Conclusion

In this post you have seen multiple ways to create shortcuts to be more efficient as developer. Have fun and success applying them in your use-cases.