install one binary, and herdr on each machine

pastor is a single binary. Install it on the machine that will run the head. The other machines need herdr and the agents; pastor on them is optional (see flock).

one line #

$ curl -fsSL https://cacari.co/pastor/install.sh | sh

It downloads the latest release for your OS and CPU, checks it against the release’s SHA256SUMS, and puts pastor in ~/.local/bin. When a logged-in gh is around, it also verifies the release’s provenance attestation. It needs curl, tar and sha256sum (or shasum): no Rust toolchain and no sudo. It warns when the folder is not on your PATH.

On a Raspberry Pi with a 64-bit kernel and a 32-bit userland, it picks the armv7 build, since a 64-bit binary would not run there.

with cargo #

The crate is called pastor-cli; the command is pastor.

$ cargo binstall pastor-cli  # the prebuilt release
$ cargo install pastor-cli --locked  # build from source: Rust 1.88+ and a C compiler

From a checkout, make install puts pastor in ~/.cargo/bin and writes the fish and bash completions.

what else you need #

A service cannot answer a passphrase prompt, so give the head a key without one, or an ssh-agent the service can reach. Each connector says what else it needs.

check it #

$ pastor --version

completions #

The script comes from the binary, so it always matches it. In fish and bash it also completes the names it finds in your files: jobs, orchestrators, flocks, machines, task ids, connectors, models, profiles and priority levels. zsh, elvish and powershell get the commands and flags only.

$ pastor completions fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/pastor.fish
$ pastor completions bash > ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions/pastor
$ pastor completions zsh > ~/.zfunc/_pastor  # any folder on your $fpath

upgrade #

Run the same install again: the one line, cargo binstall, or cargo install. The script writes the new binary beside the old one and renames it into place, so a running head keeps the old binary until it restarts. Restart it yourself:

$ pastor serve stop  # a head you started by hand
$ pastor serve
$ systemctl --user restart pastor  # a head that runs as a service

Until it does, a command that needs something only the new version has fails with head_too_old. Other machines show their new version in pastor machine list within about eleven minutes, with no restart. If the binary moved, run pastor setup systemd (or setup launchd) again so the service points at the new path.

platforms #

Linux binaries are static (musl), so one download per CPU runs on any distro.