Hamstercage is a Python module. You can install it from the source repository, or from PyPi.

pip install hamstercage

Using Hamstercage

After installation, Hamstercage is available on the path as hamstercage.

Creating a new Hamstercage repo

Hamstercage needs a manifest file in order to track files managed through it. You can create this file manually, or you can have Hamstercage create a template file for you:

hamstercage init

This creates hamstercage.yaml in the current directory.

The Hamstercage Manifest

All information about file entries is stored in the manifest file hamstercage.yaml. This YAML file consists of these top-level entries:

• hosts: each entry describes one host, in particular the set of tags that apply to it
• tags: each entry contains a list of files managed for this tag

This is a very minimal example with one host, one tag and one file:

hosts:
  testing.example.com:
    description: ''
    tags:
    - all
tags:
  all:
    description: files that apply to all hosts
    entries:
      foo.txt:
        group: staff
        mode: 0o644
        owner: stb
        type: file