SSH helper that uses regex and fancy expansion to dynamically manage SSH shortcuts

gem install hss
ln -s /path/to/your/config.yml ~/.hss.yml

This script can be used by SCP and other things that use SSH as a transport. To use it with SCP, just specify hss for the -S flag:

scp -S hss host:files/ other_host:location/

To use it with rsync, use the -e flag:

rsync -e hss files/ host:location/

You can alias this for the greater good:

alias pcs='scp -S hss'
alias cnysr='rsync -e hss'

Caveat: Because of how hss processes hosts, it will only operate on the first host-like thing in your command. As such, using scp to copy a local file to an hss'd host will work, as will the inverse, and copying a file from an hss'd host to a normal host works, but not the inverse.

1. You can put your configuration in ~/.hss.yml or another file specified by the "HSS_CONFIG" environment variable. You can refer to multiple config files in "HSS_CONFIG" by separating them with colons and the configs will be merged (HSS_CONFIG=$HOME/.hss-shared.yml:$HOME/.hss-mine.yml).
2. The only required configuration section is "patterns", which contains an array of hashes with the following attributes:

• note: Name of this pattern ("my servers")
• example: Shows how this is used ("jimbo -> [email protected]")
• short: Regex for shortcut ("^(jimbo|bob|chuck)$")
  • Use matching to collect things you want to use in the expanded form
• long: Expanded form of this shortcut ("root@#$1.example.org")
  • This will be evaluated using Ruby's string interpolation, so you can use "#{var}", "#$1", "#{function()}", etc.

3. Helpers are available for use in long forms

• expand(x): Uses the "expansions" section of the config. Format for this section is a hash of lists, as such:

expansions:
    expanded_form:
        - short_form1
        - short_form2
        - shrtfrm3

• shortcut(x): Uses the "shortcuts" section of the config. Format for this section is a hash of strings, as such

shortcuts:
    short1: expand to this
    other_short: 'expand to something else!'

• command(x): Runs the given string as a command and uses the output for the expanded form
• default(x, y): If x is not nil, uses x. If it's nil, use y
• external(source, key): Loads source as a YAML file and looks for the given key. The YAML should be made of hashes (you can nest them) and the key should be dot-separated:

fish:
    color: blue # accessible with key = 'fish.color'
    alpha:
        dog: sparky
        cat: grouchy # accessible with key 'fish.alpha.cat'

1. Run hss help for a list of available commands
2. Run hss $command to do that thing

If you define the environment variable "HSS_PASS", hss will fall back to that command if it fails to find a match:

# export HSS_PASS='ssh'

# hss [email protected]
PTY allocation request failed on channel 0
Hi akerl! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access.
Connection to github.com closed.

By default, hss prepends "ssh " to the long command from your configuration file. If you're using something different (like mosh), you can set HSS_COMMAND in your environment to override that.

If you want hss to print the command it would have run rather than executing it, you just need to set the HSS_DEBUG environment variable to something:

export HSS_DEBUG=foo
hss bar # will print rather than exec

hss is released under the MIT License. See the bundled LICENSE file for details.