zipline

Goal

Running tools that ship as Docker images means typing long, fiddly commands like:

docker run --rm -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro assaflavie/runlike my-container

Most people bury these in one-off shell aliases and lose track of them. Zipline gives them a home: it stores long docker run ... commands (or any command) under short named aliases in a local database, tracks how often you use each one, and hooks into bash/zsh so every alias works like a native command — in the spirit of what zoxide does for directories.

With zipline the command above becomes:

runlike my-container

Usage

Install and hook your shell

go install github.com/AbsolutOD/zipline@latest

Then add the hook to your shell rc file:

# ~/.zshrc
eval "$(zipline init zsh)"

# ~/.bashrc
eval "$(zipline init bash)"

This defines a short wrapper (zl by default — pick another with zipline init zsh --cmd NAME, or set cmd in ~/.config/zipline/config.toml) plus one shell function per stored alias.

Manage and run aliases

# Store a long docker command under an alias
zl add runlike "docker run --rm -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro assaflavie/runlike" \
  -d "reverse-engineer a docker run command"

# Use it like a native command; extra args are appended
runlike my-container

# Manage aliases
zl list             # sorted by most used
zl show runlike     # full details and usage stats
zl edit runlike     # edit the command in $EDITOR
zl remove runlike

Aliases added through zl are usable immediately in the same shell; other open shells pick them up when they next source the hook.

Files

Path	Purpose
~/.config/zipline/zipline.db	alias database (SQLite)
~/.config/zipline/config.toml	optional config: db_path, cmd

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME is respected when set.

CLI reference

Generated command docs live in docs/cli. Regenerate with:

go run ./internal/tools/docgen --out ./docs/cli

Caveats

• Stored commands are run as sh -c '<command> "$@"', so a command ending in a shell metacharacter like # or ; will swallow or detach any args you append when invoking the alias (# starts a comment, ; starts a new statement). Avoid trailing #/; in stored commands if you plan to append arguments.
• The wrapper name is only "known" to zl add's reserved-name check when it comes from cmd in config.toml. A wrapper name set solely via zipline init --cmd NAME (without also setting cmd in config.toml) isn't reserved, so an alias could collide with it. If you use a custom wrapper name, set cmd in config.toml to reserve it.

Building locally

Requires Go 1.26+ and a C toolchain (the SQLite driver uses cgo; on macOS that's Xcode Command Line Tools, on Debian/Ubuntu build-essential).

git clone https://github.com/AbsolutOD/zipline.git
cd zipline

# Build the binary
go build -o zipline .

# Run the test suite
go test ./...

# Try it out without touching your real config/database
export XDG_CONFIG_HOME=$(mktemp -d)
./zipline add hello "echo hello from"
./zipline run hello -- world   # prints: hello from world
./zipline list

To test the shell hook against your local build, put the binary on your PATH (or symlink it there) before eval'ing zipline init.