SILVERPIN - painlessly pin and unpin deployments on Fedora Silverblue

Project Discussion
#1

Hi, folks! :slightly_smiling_face:

I’ve just published a simple tool for Silverblue:

I honestly have no idea what you’ll say, if you like it or dislike it. :thinking: All feedback is highly appreciated–I’d love to hear about your thoughts before I release v1.0.0. :rocket:

silverpin is written in x86-64 Assembly, so it won’t work on aarch64 devices. I can rewrite it in some mid-level programming language but (1) the binaries would be unreasonably large as for such a simple task and (2) -quite surprisingly- I think that the source code might be less readable in most mid-level languages.

Perhaps the best solution would be to simply rewrite it in ARM Assembly but (1) I don’t know ARM Assembly and -more importantly- (2) I haven’t got an ARM device with Silverblue (just a smartphone with Android and Termux). So, the program is provided ‘as is’. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

It’s preliminarily tested and appears to cause no issues on Lenovo ThinkPad E480, Intel Core i5-8250U, Fedora Silverblue 36.

1 Like
#2

Looks like a good way to get into assembly, but it would be way easier (and safer for users) to just use shell aliases, or am I missing something?

#3

Thanks for the comment, @karl2 . You’re actually right–my solution is not the only possible one, it’s a matter of personal preferences and needs.

I use several different shells daily (bash, ion, nushell - I’d say I use bash the least) so (1) I prefer to set up the things just once and (2) I sometimes run into issues setting shell aliases.

But no, I don’t think my program is unsafe. :thinking: It merely calls ostree with arguments.

#4

But no, I don’t think my program is unsafe.

Its more about the install method, executing a shell script off of the internet has more potential to be unsecure.

Fair enough about using different shells! I was not thinking of that use case.

#5

Well, installing things on Silverblue is sometimes a pain… But remembering and typing sudo ostree admin pin --unpin 2 is a pain too. I’d say in most aspects Fedora is a user-friendly distro. :neutral_face:

Installing things from unofficial sources is always risky. I only can say that my code is (1) open-source and anyone can revise whether it’s a virus or not :wink: and (2) it is really simple and stupid, and in consequence less bug-prone than most apps from the official Fedora repos. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Seriously, I’m just giving people an alternative solution. People like me, who like playing a lot with different Unix shells, will probably like a shell-independent solution and find it more stable.