How To Install shfmt on Ubuntu 22.04

In this tutorial we learn how to install shfmt on Ubuntu 22.04. shfmt is shell formatter, parser, and interpreter

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install shfmt on Ubuntu 22.04.

What is shfmt

shfmt is:

shfmt is a shell formatter, parser, and interpreter. It supports POSIX Shell, Bash, and mksh.

shfmt’s default shell formatting was chosen to be consistent, common, and predictable. Some aspects of the format can be configured.

shfmt can also replace bash -n to check shell scripts for syntax errors and bashisms. It is more sophisticated and the output is friendly.

For Continuous Integration (CI) tests, one can use a variant where formatting changes are just shown as diffs.

Main features:

  • List files whose formatting differs from shfmt’s.
  • Print syntax tree to stdout as a typed JSON. This can be useful to analyze shell scripts.
  • Minify the code to reduce its size.
  • Error with a diff when the formatting differs.
  • Recursively find all shell files and print the paths.

There are three methods to install shfmt on Ubuntu 22.04. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install shfmt Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install shfmt using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install shfmt

Install shfmt Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install shfmt using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install shfmt

Install shfmt Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Ubuntu. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install shfmt using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install shfmt

How To Uninstall shfmt on Ubuntu 22.04

To uninstall only the shfmt package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove shfmt

Uninstall shfmt And Its Dependencies

To uninstall shfmt and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Ubuntu 22.04, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove shfmt

Remove shfmt Configurations and Data

To remove shfmt configuration and data from Ubuntu 22.04 we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge shfmt

Remove shfmt configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove shfmt configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge shfmt

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install shfmt package on Ubuntu 22.04 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.