Install

jaunt is one static binary. Installing it means putting that file in ~/.local/bin on each machine you want to link. Nothing else is written unless you ask for it, and nothing needs root.

The one-line install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ZahakJ/jaunt/main/install.sh | sh

Run it as the user who will use jaunt, not as root; the script refuses to run as root. It does this, in order:

1. Picks the release asset for this machine. Only Linux on x86_64 has one (jaunt-x86_64-linux-musl); on anything else it stops and tells you to build from source.
2. Downloads the binary and its .sha256 file from the latest GitHub release, over HTTPS only (it refuses plain http://, including a redirect to it).
3. Checks the binary against the checksum, runs it once with --version to make sure it works on this machine, and writes it to ~/.local/bin/jaunt. The write is a copy into the same directory followed by a rename, so a daemon that is already running keeps its old file until it restarts.
4. Writes the machine name and the relay into jaunt’s config file, if you gave --name or --relay. Values already in the config are kept.
5. Tells you whether ~/.local/bin is on your PATH, and prints the next two commands. It starts nothing unless you pass --up.

The script is POSIX sh, and everything in it sits inside one function that runs on the last line, so a download cut off half way runs nothing.

Releases are not signed; the checksum catches a corrupted download.

Passing options through the one-liner

To give the script options when it arrives through a pipe, pass them after sh -s --:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ZahakJ/jaunt/main/install.sh | sh -s -- --name toluene --relay https://relay.example.net

or download it first and run it as a file:

sh install.sh --relay https://relay.example.net --name toluene

Every option

These come from the header of install.sh; sh install.sh --help prints the same list.

Two environment variables change where the download comes from:

The script also reads JAUNT_BIN_DIR as the default for --bin-dir. If you point JAUNT_REPO at a private fork, the script falls back to gh release download when the plain download answers 404; for the public repository the GitHub CLI is not needed.

The config file it writes is ~/.config/jaunt/config.toml (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/jaunt/config.toml), created with mode 0600 in a private directory.

Installing without the network: --from-file

On a machine with no internet, or when you want to check the file yourself first, copy the binary over and install it from disk:

sh install.sh --from-file ./jaunt-x86_64-linux-musl --name xylene

If jaunt-x86_64-linux-musl.sha256 sits next to it, the checksum is checked. If not, the script installs the binary unchecked and says so.

Building from source

Every platform other than Linux x86_64 builds from source, with a Rust toolchain:

git clone https://github.com/ZahakJ/jaunt
cd jaunt
cargo build --release
sh install.sh --from-file target/release/jaunt

cargo test runs the unit tests. The release binary itself is built by scripts/build-release.sh in a throwaway debian:12 container, as a static musl binary of about 10.7 MB.

Supported platforms

The machine you hop into should have tmux. Without it a hop gets a plain shell that ends when the link drops; jaunt check warns about this.

Demo

jaunt demo runs the interface on made-up machines:

jaunt demo               # the live mesh view on made-up machines
jaunt demo ls            # the same machines as jaunt ls prints them
jaunt demo link          # the pairing screens, inviting side
jaunt demo link --join   # the pairing screens, joining side

No daemon, network or relay is involved. Press q to leave the mesh view. Colour follows your terminal: NO_COLOR or --no-color turns it off, and JAUNT_ASCII=1 swaps the box-drawing glyphs for plain ASCII.

Next steps

On the first machine:

jaunt relay set https://relay.example.net   # once, on the first machine
jaunt up                                     # install and start the user service
jaunt link                                   # shows a code for the next machine

The relay comes first; its chapter is The relay. Then Pairing.

jaunt up installs a systemd user service (~/.config/systemd/user/jaunt.service) so the daemon starts at login and survives logout. It uses KillMode=process, so restarting jaunt never kills your tmux sessions. Without the service, any jaunt command starts the daemon by itself when it needs it, and says so. jaunt down stops it.

Uninstall

jaunt uninstall

This stops the service or the daemon, removes the unit, the config, the state and runtime directories, and the binary (only ~/.local/bin/jaunt, and only if it is the binary that is running). It asks before deleting the key and the member list; --yes deletes them without asking, --keep-key keeps them without asking. Your tmux sessions are left alone.

Uninstalling does not tell the other machines. To revoke this one, run from another machine in the mesh:

jaunt unlink toluene

To take a machine out of the mesh in one step while it is still running, use jaunt leave instead (see Pairing).