Servalias: a shell alias system friendly for your paws

What is it?

Servalias is a curated, forever free, modular shell alias collection for Unix-like operating systems, designed to make routine tasks much easier.

All the aliases provided in this repo are designed to be POSIX-compatible.

Note: for a minimal, barebones alias file built upon the same architecture, see .luxrc.

Installation

First, clone the repo and remove the cruft:

git clone https://codeberg.org/luxferre/servalias.git ~/.aliases && rm -rf ~/.aliases/.git ~/.aliases/README.md

Then, append the following line to your shell's RC file (for Bash, it's usually .bashrc):

[ -f ~/.aliases/main ] && . ~/.aliases/main

Modules

By default, Servalias is shipped with the following modules:

• main: the entry point that contains the alias management framework, do not touch unless absolutely necessary;
• core: the core commands that can be reused within any other module;
• sys: OS-specific stuff that's supposed to be modified according to your distribution (the included alias set is for Void Linux);
• net: aliases related to any networking activity;
• dev: aliases related to any development or DevOps activity;
• media: multimedia-related aliases;
• custom: aliases created automatically via other commands, like savealias (see below).

Every module can be edited with the aliases-[modulename] command (e.g. aliases-net). These commands use the $EDITOR environment variable to open corresponding files, defaulting to vim if such a variable isn't set.

Custom aliases

Once Servalias is plugged into your shell, you can do all sorts of tricks with custom alias definitions.

Scenario 1: you need to define an alias that uses positional parameters within your command. The standard alias would require some sort of function wrapping to achieve this. For this purpose, the defalias macro exists here. You just write defalias myname '...all sorts of crazy stuff...' and you'll see the alias being saved properly with all the wrappers applied.

Scenario 2: you have come up with a really long command line that you have tested and want to turn into an alias right away. To do this without additional copy-pasting, use the toalias [name] macro. It will take the most recent line in your command history and turn it into a ready-to-use alias.

Scenario 3: you have created a new alias (with the usual alias command or with Servalias macros like defalias or toalias) and really liked it, but now you want to save it to reuse in future shell sessions. Again, to avoid any copy-pasting, the savealias [name] command allows you to save any live alias of your choice into the custom module which will be reloaded alongside the others on the next session.

By the way, in case you prefer editing the files manually and not via aliases-[modulename] commands, you can apply your changes after saving the files with reload-aliases command.

Credits

Created by Luxferre in 2026, released into public domain with no warranties.