Distributing a custom command line tool to enterprise servers
- by Jeremy Baker
I've been tasked with building a command line tool that we will be providing to our enterprise customers so that they can use the API to upload data to our platform. The API works with standard cURL requests, so I can do most of the basic functionality with simple bash scripting, although I would like to provide something that is solid and really makes it easy for them to use and I don't know what I don't know. It's been a good 8 years since I've really done any serious sysadmin work.
Most of the good tools I use these days are written in Ruby or Python and have a standard distribution process (Gems, for example). However, I know rhel and other platforms have their own package managers.
Finally, the question: In today's day and age, what language / distribution method should I consider in order to cover the widest range of platforms without having to build completely different versions for each platform?
I'd also love any general feedback you have about building similar projects, or links to projects that you think do a good job of this now and have open source code that I could read.
Thanks in advance!
