but-installer

A lightweight Rust installer for GitButler. Currently supports macOS only.

How It Works

Installation is split into two parts:

1. Bootstrap script (scripts/install.sh) - Minimal shell script that:

   • Detects OS/architecture
   • Fetches installer metadata from app.gitbutler.com
   • Downloads the appropriate installer binary
   • Executes it

2. Installer binary (this crate) - Handles the actual installation:

   • Downloads and verifies the GitButler tarball
   • Extracts and installs the app bundle atomically
   • Sets up the but CLI symlink
   • Configures shell PATH and completions

Usage

# Via bootstrap script (recommended)
curl -sSL https://gitbutler.com/install.sh | sh
curl -sSL https://gitbutler.com/install.sh | sh -s nightly
curl -sSL https://gitbutler.com/install.sh | sh -s 0.18.7

# Direct invocation
but-installer                  # Install latest stable
but-installer nightly          # Install nightly
but-installer 0.18.7           # Install specific version

Building

cargo build --release -p but-installer
cargo test -p but-installer

The binary is optimized for size (~1.0MB) using system libcurl instead of bundling an HTTP client. Keeping this installer slim is a priority since it is downloaded before every installation.