After over a year of work we’re excited to announce the beta version of our official command line tool to interact with resin.io, with support for all major operating systems.
The benefits of the command line are known and huge: productivity, script-ability, geek looking; you name it. The Resin CLI is prepared to do everything you can do in the web dashboard and more, from the comfort of your terminal emulator.
The resin CLI also introduces a new paradigm in the way you provision devices.
Going client-side
The dashboard serves device operating system images for a particular application, which were previously configured by our servers. Once downloaded, the process of burning the image, running necessary scripts or performing any additional steps is still your responsibility.
The Resin CLI revolutionizes this scenario by moving all configuration steps to the user’s computer. This approach has the following benefits:
Reduced bandwidth usage
We heard your subconscious complaints each time we asked you to download another gigabyte and a half to get started with your new shiny application.
The Resin CLI downloads an image once per device type and saves it in a local cache, this cache is only invalidated when resin releases an update for that image. This means that if you already downloaded a Raspberry Pi image, you can reuse it for thousands of other Raspberry Pi applications without having to re-download each time.
Provisioning devices has never been easier
You no longer have to remember the intimate details of each device type when you want to flash it with a new OS. The Resin CLI knows how to deal with even the most complex devices, so you can sit back and relax while we do the work.
Native powers
The fact that the Resin CLI runs in your computer allows us to go even further than we could with our web application. The Resin CLI takes care of running any necessary scripts or burning your images to SD Cards so you don’t have to deal with dd or download any other third party tool for this task …and did we mention this works the same on all platforms? Consistent SD card writing on Windows, Linux, and OS X. This was not an easy nut to crack.
A bit of magic into the mix
The world of IoT advances very fast, and we want to make sure you stay in the loop. There are hordes of new devices that we’re going to be supporting soon, so we put a lot of work in unleashing their power to your fingertips as easy and fast as possible.
The Resin CLI automatically learns about new devices and the unique ways to configure them, without even requiring an update. How cool is that?
Craft your perfect work-flow
We’ve included a nice little gem in the Resin CLI that allows you to introduce new commands by a powerful plug-in framework.
This means you can create your own plug-ins to customize the way you use the resin CLI, to make you even more productive. You could share them with the community too, creating a gallery of powerful resin.io tools at your fingertips.
We’re excited to hear what you build with it!
If you have questions or just want to say hi, you can find us on gitter.
Love,
Team resin.io
