A smarter way to open your files. Pigpen is a wrapper around the Linux open command, with an added layer of configuration. With Pigpen, you can easily configure what applications open what file types.
This was very easy to make, but its simplicity is what makes it great. It is exactly what I needed to forever improve my Linux experience.
Speaking of Linux, I know that this will be hard to review because there is no Windows support. For those who are not blessed with using a superior operating system, I hope that the GIF which I recorded will be enough of a demo experience.
This all started when I wanted to configure the Linux open command so that I could open png files in my web browser rather than the image viewing program which I did not really like. It turns out that this configuration process is convaluted and difficult and was not fun at all.
Therefore, I decided to create Pigpen, a wrapper around the open command. It is very simple because it is just a wrapper. It reads from a config file (located at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/pigpen/config.txt) and decides what program to use.
In the below screenshot, you can see Pigpen in use. In the terminal window, you can see that my config has PDF’s open in Zathura and image files open in Qutebrowser. I then use Pigpen to open the monkey picture and it opens in Qutebrowser, and I use Pigpen again to open a D&D character sheet and it opens in Zathura.
I made Pigpen to be super easily configured, and I am very glad with how it came out. From now on, I will have “open” aliased to “pigpen” in my bashrc so I will always use Pigpen. If you want to use it too, I will have installation instructions in the Readme.
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