I set out to create a set of useful commandline functions, aliases, and environment variables among with bundled programs to help unify a series of computers than cannot use the same shell. I have some remote servers that have outdated bash running on them, and without root priveleges. But, I still want to keep them all running similarly. That's why I created the Unity Shell project. Most of the shell commands and functions are sh compatible and are located in the "Unity" directory. Those that are bash or zsh specific are in their respective folders.

There is a little bit of easy setup to get these files running on any machine.

$ git clone git@github.com:scicalculator/Unity-Shell.git ~/.rcfiles
$ cd ~/.rcfiles
$ git submodule init
$ git submodule update
$ ./setup.sh

The setup script that is run at the end will try to setup your machine as one of 3 types. A central (firewall) server, a local (laptop, desktop, etc.) computer, or a remote server. It then asks you to select your desired shell and if possible it moves the relevant shell startup files to the home directory.

After that it goes through directory and collect as many relevant executables as possible and soft-link them to the home directory's bin folder. It also moves the vim folder and modules folder to easy-to-locate positions in the home directory (~/.vim and ~/.rcbundes respectively).

At this point, you'll want to reload your shell: 1) close and reopen the shell or 2) source ~/.$(basename ${SHELL})rc. Now, let's install some of the compilable programs. Run these commands:

$ cd ~/.rcfiles

# for compiled programs in ~/.rcbundles/*
$ ./builders/remake.py

# for helpful python-pip and ruby-gems installations
$ ./builders/mod_install.sh

Don't worry, I tried very hard to make sure that these files all install to the directory ~/local so that you shouldn't need root priveleges to install anything.

Last, but not least, let's update our vim installation, assuming you've reloaded your shell

$ cd ~/.vim

# now to use some of the helpful tools, such as extensive git aliases
$ g subinit 
$ g subup

# updating? 
$ g submaster

Right now, there isn't a written up review of the available commands that come in here, but if you look through the modules, it should be rather straight forward.