Setup argsh

There are three ways to setup argsh:

• Install argsh (globally): It will install argsh (globally), so you can use it from anywhere.
• Source argsh in your shell: Source argsh in your Bash script as a library.
• Just copy parts of argsh: You can just copy the parts of argsh that you need and use them in your script.

Install argsh (globally)

This method allows you to load argsh easily via a shebang in your script.

#!/usr/bin/env argsh
# shellcheck shell=bash
# vim: filetype=bash

Also the argsh script is a wrapper around the argsh docker image. This gives you the ability to use the following options to help you to write nice scripts:

• test - Run the tests for your script
• lint - Lint your script
• docs - Generate documentation for your script
• coverage - Generate a coverage report
• minify - Minify your script (experimental)
• AI integration - MCP servers and LLM tool schemas

Note

If you use argsh as executer (shebang) you have to include ${ARGSH_SOURCE} in the call check.

[[ "${0}" != "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" && -z "${ARGSH_SOURCE:-}" ]] || main "${@}"

Globally

You can install argsh globally by running the following command:

curl -sL https://min.arg.sh | sudo tee /usr/local/bin/argsh > /dev/null
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/argsh

Project based

You can also install argsh project based using direnv. The recommended pattern is to have a directory .bin in your project root and add it to your PATH using direnv.

curl -sL https://min.arg.sh > .bin/argsh
chmod +x .bin/argsh

Bootstrap a new project

If you want to quickly bootstrap a new project with argsh just do this

bash -c "$(curl -sL https://get.arg.sh)"

This will setup

• a .bin directory in your project root with argsh
• a test to help you get started with testing
• a scripts directory with an example script and test
• a .github/workflows directory with a GitHub Actions workflow
• a .envrc to initialize your environment

Source argsh in your shell

You can source argsh in your Bash script.

curl -sL https://get.arg.sh > argsh.sh

Then, in your script, you can source it like this:

source argsh.sh

Just copy parts of argsh

Go to the library overview and copy the parts of argsh that you need and use them in your script.

Next Steps

• Library Overview
• Command line parser