First AUR Package

Today marks the first time I’ve publicly released something since Quack.Net, which was almost 2 years ago. I am proud to present: shshare!

What?

shshare is a shell script (technically two) that can capture a screenshot or screen recording and automatically upload it to a destination of the user’s choosing. It’s contained in two files: shshare - the core script that handles options and the capturing of data, and uploader.sh, a script intended to be modified by the user that provides the functionality of taking that data to its final destination.

Why?

Before creating shshare, I used a collection of about 5 shell scripts to capture screenshots and screencasts. I decided I wanted to centralize all of that into one script (although it turned out being two), and shshare was born.

At first, I had the capture and upload functionality contained in the same script. I quickly realized that this would make handling custom upload destinations a hassle, so I decided to move it all to a second uploader.sh script. This way, if a user wants to use a file host other than the default, they can simply copy the default script in /etc/shshare/ to their home config directory and modify it to their liking. This way, the user can upload to wherever they want, and I don’t have to worry about their wacky file hosts.

Bonus Points

Separating shshare into two scripts also helps it follow the Unix philosophy. shshare is only concerned with capturing data, and uploader.sh is only concerned with uploading it.

How?

shshare, as the name suggests, is a shell script. It’s written completely in bash and uses maim to capture screenshots and ffmpeg to capture screen recordings. uploader.sh is installed to the /etc/shshare/ directory, but can be copied to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME and modified to the user’s liking. By default, it uploads both screenshots and screen recordings to imgur.

What did I learn?

This project involved learning the fundamentals of bash scripting - namely variables, proper test syntax, traps, and case statements. The most unfamiliar part of this project was creating a PKGBUILD and releasing it on the Arch User Repository. Understanding what exactly the prepare(), build(), and package() functions were for - and that I only needed one of them, as well as understanding how the source tarball should be structured tripped me up at first, but all became clear as I looked through other AUR packages and dissected the build process myself to see where I was going wrong.

Conclusion

Overall, I’m happy with the outcome of this project. It’s not as feature-complete as I’d like it to be, and I’m sure it’s easy to break if not used in the exact way I tested it, but that’s what prereleases are for, right? v0 is the crazy college years of any piece of software, so I’m not going to sweat it too much.