2.1 KiB
mirro
mirro is a tiny safety-first editing wrapper for text files. You edit a temporary file, mirro detects whether anything changed, and if it did, it saves a backup of the original before writing your changes.
Why mirro?
Well... have you ever been in the “ugh, I forgot to back this up first” situation?
No?
Stop lying... (:))
mirro gives you a built-in safety net:
-
never edits the real file directly
-
detects whether the edit actually changed content
-
creates a timestamped backup only when changes occurred
-
clearly labels backups so you know exactly what they came from
-
respects the user’s
$EDITORwhen possible -
requires
sudoonly when actually needed
It’s simple, predictable, and hard to misuse.
I mean... the only thing you need to remember is to use it.
How it works
mirro reads the original file (or pre-populates new files with a friendly message).
It writes that content into a temporary file.
It launches your $EDITOR to edit the temp file.
When the editor closes, mirro compares old vs new.
If nothing changed:
file hasn't changed
If changed:
file changed; original backed up at: ~/.local/share/mirro/ (or /root/.local/share/mirro/ under sudo)
Backed up files include a header:
# ---------------------------------------------
# mirro backup
# Original file: /path/to/whatever.conf
# Timestamp: 2025-11-10 17:44:00 UTC
# ---------------------------------------------
So you never lose track of the original location.
Backup directory
By default all the backups will be stored at:
~/.local/share/mirro/
so under sudo:
/root/.local/share/mirro/
Backups are named like:
filename.ext.orig.20251110T174400.bak
Installation
NOTE: To use mirro with sudo, the path to mirro must be in the $PATH seen by root. Either install mirro as root (preferred), use sudo -E mirro, or add the $PATH to /etc/sudoers using its Defaults secure_path parameter.
Install via PyPI (preferred):
pip install mirro
Or clone the repo and install locally:
git clone https://github.com/mdaleo404/mirro.git
cd mirro/
poetry install