5.3 KiB
Ghee: a command line tool for working with Linux extended attributes (xattrs)
The tastiest way to work with Linux extended attributes (xattrs) written in pure Rust and made of delicious, fibrous Open Source code.
Ghee provides tools for manipulating xattrs on individual files as well as for working with the filesystem as a document database where the filesystem paths act as primary keys and extended attributes provide non-indexed fields.
History
Ghee was developed in conjunction with the Audiotater audio annotation tool.
License
This software is licensed under GPL version 3 only.
Conventions
Extended attributes are parsed in a consistent manner by Ghee. Any xattr not preceded by the trusted
, security
, system
, or user
namespace will have the user
namespace by default. For example, xattr trusted.uptime
remains as is, while uptime
would become
user.uptime
.
Examples
Ghee operates through a set of subcommands, each with a primary function.
Move
Moves xattr values from one path to another.
ghee mv path1.txt path2.txt
: move all xattrs from path1.txt to path2.txtghee mv -f id path1.txt path2.txt
: move xattrid
from path1.txt to path2.txtghee mv -f id -f url path1.txt path2.txt
: move xattrsid
andurl
from path1.txt to path2.txt
Copy
Copies xattr values from one path to another.
ghee cp path1.txt path2.txt
: copy all xattrs from path1.txt to path2.txtghee cp -f id path1.txt path2.txt
: copy xattrid
from path1.txt to path2.txtghee cp -f id -f url path1.txt path2.txt
: copy xattrsid
andurl
from path1.txt to path2.txt
Remove
Removes xattr values.
ghee rm path.txt
: remove all xattrs on path.txtghee rm -f id path.txt
: remove xattrid
from path.txtghee rm -f id -f url path1.txt path2.txt path3.txt
: remove xattrsid
andurl
from path1.txt, path2.txt, and path3.txt
Set
Sets xattr values.
ghee set -s id=123 path1.txt
: set xattrid
to value123
on path1.txtghee set -s id=123 -s url=http://example.com path1.txt path2.txt path3.txt
: set xattrid
to value123
and xattrurl
to valuehttp://example.com
on path1.txt, path2.txt, and path3.txt
Get
Recursively get and print xattr values for one or more paths.
By default, the get
subcommand outputs a tab-separated table with a column order of path
, field
, value
.
The value bytes are written to stdout as-is without decoding.
To opt out of the recursive default, use --flat
.
ghee get dir
: print all xattrs for directorydir
and all descendant files and directories, as raw (undecoded) TSVghee get -f id path1.txt
: print xattrid
and its value on path1.txt as raw (undecoded) TSVghee get -f id -f url path1.txt path2.txt path3.txt
: print xattrsid
andurl
and their respective values on path1.txt, path2.txt, and path3.txt as raw (undecoded) TSV
The get
command can also output JSON - in which case values are decoded as UTF-8, filling in a default codepoint when decoding fails:
ghee get -j --flat dir
: print all xattrs for directorydir
and all descendant files and directories, as UTF-8 decoded JSONghee get -j -f id path1.txt
: print xattrid
and its value on path1.txt as UTF-8 decoded JSONghee get -j -f id -f url path1.txt path2.txt path3.txt
: print xattrsid
andurl
and their respective values on path1.txt, path2.txt, and path3.txt as JSON
By adding --where
(or -w
), SQL WHERE-style clauses can be provided to select which files to include in the output. For example,
ghee get -w age >= 65 ./patients
will select all files under directory ./patients
whose user.age
attribute is 65 or greater.
Index
Indexes a "table".
When Ghee acts on a directory as if it were a database table, each file acts as a relational "record" with the primary key coming from the subpath under the table directory.
Each file's extended attributes act as the relational attributes, with an overloadable virtual attribute id
that represents the primary key.
For each subcomponent $i of the primary key, there is also a virtual attribute id$i
.
Table directories created by Ghee also contain a special xattr user.ghee.keyname
which gives a user-friendly name for the primary key
component represented by that directory.
Examples:
-
ghee idx -k name ./people ./people-by-name
: recursively reindex the contents of./people
into a new directory./people-by-name
with primary key coming from xattrname
and files hardlinked to the corresponding files in./people
.That means the
./people-by-name
directory's files will have filenames taken from the names of the people as defined in xattrname
.The new directory
./people-by-name
will have xattruser.ghee.keyname=name
so later commands can do efficient index lookups using user-friendly field names. -
ghee idx -k region -k name -s ./people-by-name ./people-by-region-and-name
: recursively reindex the contents of./people-by-name
into a new directory./people-by-region-and-name
with primary key being the compound of xattrregion
and xattrname
(in that order) and files hardlinked to the corresponding files in./people
, resolved via the hardlinks in./people-by-name
.The output directory
./people-by-region-and-name
will have xattruser.ghee.keyname=region
and each region-named subdirectory will have xattruser.ghee.keyname=name
.