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curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://get.dist.sh | sh

iwr https://get.dist.sh/install.ps1 -useb | iex

Note: Yes, I know, you really shouldn't download and run scripts from the internet, but at least it's not using sudo!

Overview

Without a doubt, homebrew has had a major impact on the macOS and even the linux ecosystem. It has made it easy to install software and keep it up to date. However, it has been around for 15+ years and while it has evolved over time, its core technology really hasn't changed, and 15+ years is an eternity in the tech world. Languages like Go and Rust have made it easy to compile binaries and distribute them without complicated installers or dependencies. I love homebrew, but I think there's room for another tool.

distillery is a tool that is designed to make it easy to install binaries on your system from multiple different sources. It is designed to be simple and easy to use. It is NOT designed to be a package manager or handle complex dependencies, that's where homebrew shines.

The goal of this project is to install binaries by leverage the collective power of all the developers out there that are using tools like goreleaser and cargo-dist and many others to pre-compile their software and put their binaries up on GitHub or GitLab.

Features

  • Simple to install binaries on your system from multiple sources
  • No reliance on a centralized repository of metadata like package managers
  • Support multiple platforms and architectures
  • Support private repositories (this was a feature removed from homebrew)
  • Support checksum verifications (if they exist)
  • Support signatures verifications (if they exist)
  • Aliases for easy access to binaries

Examples

Install a specific version of a tool using @version syntax. github is the default scope, this implies github/ekristen/aws-nuke

dist install ekristen/aws-nuke@3.16.0

Install a tool from a specific owner and repository, in this case hashicorp. This will install the latest version. However, because hashicorp hosts their binaries on their own domain, distillery has special handling for obtaining the latest version from releases.hashicorp.com instead of GitHub.

dist install hashicorp/terraform

Install a binary from GitLab. 

dist install gitlab/gitlab-org/gitlab-runner

Often times installing from GitHub or GitLab is sufficient, but if you are on a MacOS system and Homebrew has the binary you want, you can install it using the homebrew scope. I would generally still recommend just installing from GitHub or GitLab directly.

dist install homebrew/opentofu

Behaviors

  • Allow for multiple versions of a binary using tool@version syntax
  • Running installation for any version will automatically update the default symlink to that version (i.e. switching versions)
  • Caching of HTTP calls where possible (GitHub primarily)
  • Caching of downloads

Whenever you run install the default symlink will always be updated to whatever version you specify. This is to make it easy to switch versions.

Multiple Versions

Every time you run install it will by default seek out the latest version, it will not remove any other versions. All versions are symlinked with the suffix @version this means you can have multiple versions installed at the same time.

It also means you can call any version any time using the @version syntax or if you are using something like direnv you can set aliases in your .envrc file for specific versions.

Example

alias terraform="terraform@1.8.5"