qriswitch

A node CLI for switching qri profile environment variables. Tested on MacOS Catalina.

Background

Qri makes use two hidden directories, .qri and .ipfs, located in the user's home directory. Together, these define the qri user's identity and collection of datasets.

Switching to a different user identity is possible if the user sets QRI_PATH and IPFS_PATH to different directories and either running Qri Desktop or running qri setup in qri CLI.

qriswitch allows for quickly changing these two environment variables to switch between multiple profiles.

Getting Started

Have nodejs and qri installed, then

• Clone this repo
• Install dependencies yarn
• Install as a global command npm install -g
• The command qriswitch should be available in your terminal

Source qriswitch's env variables file in your shell

qriswitch sets environment variables in a file $HOME/.qriswitch/.env. This file should be sourced in your shell environment:

For me, it's .bash_profile, but add this wherever your shell gets its settings.

source ~/.qriswitch/.env

Creating a New Profile

If you create a new profile using qriswitch and then open Qri Desktop, you'll have a local-only peername. You will need to run qri registry signup to register this qri peer with qri.cloud before publishing.

Switch!

Run qriswitch, you'll see a prompt to choose from existing profiles, use the default (home directory) profile, or create a new profile

current profile: chriswhong_dev
? Choose a Profile (Use arrow keys)
❯ chriswhong_dev
  ──────────────
  use default qri profile
  create a new profile

If you're using Qri CLI:

• make sure Qri Desktop is not running
• after switching, the current shell still thinks the previous environment variables are still in effect. Either run source ~/.qriswitch/.env or open a new terminal window to use the new profile.

If you're using Qri Desktop:

• make sure it is not running when you switch

Profiles

Profiles are just hidden directories in $HOME/.qriswitch containing .ipfs and .qri directories.

For example, if you create a profile named myusername, qriwitch will create:

• $HOME/.qriswitch/myusername/.qri
• $HOME/.qriswitch/myusername/.ipfs

Creating a profile only makes these directories and sets the environment variables to

Environment Variables

QRI_PATH and IPFS_PATH are used to override the default paths for the qri and ipfs directories ($HOME/.qri and $HOME/.ipfs, respectively)

When you choose a profile, qriswitch does two things:

• exports both environment variables in $HOME/.qriswitch/.env, which makes them available in your shell (see above for how to 'source' this file)
• uses launchctl setenv to make both environment variables available to Qri Desktop

This has never been tested in Windows or Linux. PRs welcome for expansion to other environments.