get-installer

A reusable, registry-driven curl | sh-style installer for distributing developer tools across public OSS, private enterprises, universities, and government / domain-locked contexts.

Pronounced "get installer": same words as the URL get.simtabi.com. The technique is also called one-line installer, bootstrap installer, or distribution channel (see SPEC.md §0).

# POSIX (macOS / Linux / WSL / Git-Bash)
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://get.simtabi.com/install.sh)" -- --product claude-configurator

# PowerShell (Windows)
irm https://get.simtabi.com/install.ps1 | iex

Table of contents

• Why this exists
• Quick start
• What ships in the box
• URL layout at get.simtabi.com
• Project layout
• Security posture
• Documentation
• Run from source
• Tests
• Roadmap
• License

Why this exists

Distributing developer tools is a solved problem only when the tool is already on PyPI / Homebrew / apt / a package store. For everything else (fresh-machine bootstrap, mixed-OS install, on-prem enterprise catalogues, university course toolkits, government-domain-locked software) the de-facto pattern is curl | sh, hand-rolled per project.

This project gives you that pattern once, hardened and reusable:

• One Python core that drives every install.
• JSON registry (with optional REST-API source) declares products, versions, install methods, prompts, post-install steps.
• Thin shell launchers for the one-liner UX (install.sh, install.ps1).
• Drop-in vendoring: copy this folder + edit registry.json + publish. Done.
• Hardened by default: refuses root, HTTPS-only, origin allowlist, rate-limited, journaled rollback on signal/error, 0600 modes on every artefact.

Reference implementations this borrows patterns from: rustup (the gold-standard one-liner), Homebrew (prompt-before-privileged-step), Docker get.docker.com (distribution-aware), uv install (Python bootstrap fallback), k3s (service installer).

Quick start

get-installer --list                                # see what's available
get-installer --product claude-configurator         # install latest default version
get-installer --product claude-configurator --version 0.2.0 --yes
get-installer --product claude-configurator --dry-run

When used via the one-liner, the bootstrap script downloads the Python core into a 0700-mode temp dir, verifies its SHA256 (when pinned), and hands off to Python. Body bytes flow URL → disk; no shell-eval of fetched content.

What ships in the box

URL layout at get.simtabi.com

https://get.simtabi.com/
├── install.sh                         POSIX bootstrap
├── install.ps1                        PowerShell bootstrap
├── installer.py                       Python core (single-file bundle)
├── installer.py.sha256                SHA256 of installer.py
├── registry.json                      Static fallback registry
├── api/v1/registry.json               Dynamic (DB-backed) registry
├── api/v1/products                    List products
├── api/v1/products/<product>/versions GET versions
├── <product>/install.sh               Convenience alias (sets --product)
├── <product>/<version>/install.sh     Version-pinned alias
└── orgs/<org>/...                     Multi-tenant subtrees (token-gated)

Customer-mirror domains follow the same path layout, e.g. https://get.<customer>.com/install.sh resolves locally.

Full URL contract in SPEC.md §2.

Project layout

get-installer/
├── README.md                          you are here
├── SPEC.md                            design spec + standing agent prompt
├── LICENSE                            MIT
├── CHANGELOG.md
├── pyproject.toml
├── registry.json                      this project's registry (also dev fallback)
├── bootstrap/                         OS-specific launchers
│   ├── install.sh                     POSIX (sh-compatible)
│   └── install.ps1                    PowerShell 5+
├── src/
│   └── get_installer/                 the Python package (stdlib only)
│       ├── __init__.py
│       ├── __main__.py                CLI entry
│       ├── config.py                  Registry + version resolution
│       ├── installer.py               7-phase flow
│       ├── journal.py                 GC / rollback
│       ├── ui.py                      prompts + colour
│       ├── verify.py                  HTTPS + sha256 + rate limits + refuse-root
│       └── python_setup.py            --with-python via uv
├── schemas/
│   └── registry.schema.json           JSON Schema (authoritative)
├── tests/                             pytest suite
└── docs/
    ├── config-schema.md
    ├── security.md
    └── vendoring.md

Security posture

The full threat model lives in docs/security.md. Headline guarantees:

• HTTPS-only for every Python-side download. Refuses URLs outside the access_control.allowed_origins allowlist.
• TOCTOU-safe writes: O_CREAT | O_EXCL + 0600 mode on every installer-owned file.
• Rate-limited: bounded retries, exponential backoff with jitter, HTTP 429 Retry-After respect, wall-clock deadline.
• Refuse-root by default: no installer is allowed to silently elevate; --allow-root is the explicit override.
• Yanked-status hard-stop: registry can declare a version yanked; the installer refuses to proceed unconditionally.
• Journal + rollback: every state-changing step records an undo callback. Signal (SIGINT / SIGTERM) or unhandled exception triggers reverse-order rollback.
• Per-product access controls (Phase E foundation): registry can declare access.auth (bearer-token, with custom env var + hint URL) and access.signed (HMAC-SHA256 pre-signed URLs with local expiry verification). Wired end-to-end through CLI, schema, resolver, and the validate phase.

Pending hardening: SHA256-pinned bootstrap, sigstore signatures, reproducible bundle output, full org-scoped tenancy. See docs/SPEC.md §4 Phase F + Phase H and docs/security.md for the full threat model.

Documentation

Run from source

git clone https://github.com/simtabi/get-installer
cd get-installer
pip install -e ".[dev]"

get-installer --list
get-installer --product claude-configurator --dry-run --yes

Tests

pytest -q                              # 43 cases
ruff check src tests
mypy src/get_installer

Roadmap

Phase-by-phase plan lives in SPEC.md §4. Headline phases:

License

MIT. See LICENSE.