I just made two cool bash functions for use at work. One checks if a Debian/Ubuntu package is present and installs it if it isn't. The second takes a string bash command and echos it before running it, exiting the script if there's an error.
dependency() {
PKG="$1"
PKG_OK=$(dpkg-query -W --showformat='${Status}\n' ${PKG} | grep "install ok installed")
if [ "" == "$PKG_OK" ]; then
echo "No $PKG. Installing $PKG."
sudo aptitude --assume-yes install $PKG
fi
}smart_run_cmd() {
echo $1
$1
if [ $? != 0 ]; then
echo "Waaaah aborting"
exit 1
fi
}