The Dude

The Dude is here to make your terminal life more chilled.

You preload The Dude with your commonly used commands. Then you run them. Alternatively, The Dude already knows how to do a bunch of stuff for you.

For example:

$ dude fetch google.co.uk # opens a google.co.uk in lynx
$ dude show me pictures of cool stuff # opens a browser with a google images search for 'cool stuff'
$ dude wassup # starts top

How can this be useful?

• a single dude command can trigger a bunch of other commands. Sure you could write a shell script and run that using an alias but that assumes you're happy writing shell scripts.
• for the command-line phobic, dude provides a friendly interface to the command line.
• for those who are at home on the command line, there can still be a benefit in reducing the cognitive overhead required to run scripts.
• commands can be bundled and shared using gems meaning that command line savvy devs can set up simpler commands for other team members to use.

Talking to The Dude

You can install TheDude using

$ gem install the_dude

The Dude comes with a 'dude' binary so you can use this to run commands

$ dude why? # will output 'because'

Alternatively, you can start the dude interactively with

$ dude -i

Then you get a dude prompt you can enter commands straight into.

Installing plugins

You can install plugins for TheDude that contain additional commands or add additional functionality. Plugins are bundled as gems. For example to install the trello plugin simply use

$ gem install the_dude-trello

You will now be able to use the commands defined in the Trello plugin.