LocalSend Dispatcher is a non-interactive command line client for
LocalSend. It wraps the official localsend core crate and replaces the
interactive terminal UI with a proper CLI that takes everything from the command
line and exits once the operation is done.
git submodule update --init
cargo install --path .The package is called localsend-dispatcher because lsd was already taken on
crates.io, but it builds and installs a single binary named lsd. It isn't on
crates.io itself, because the LocalSend core it depends on has not been
published there, so the dependency can only be satisfied from the submodule.
vendor/localsend is the LocalSend repository as a git submodule, and
Cargo.toml depends on packages/core inside it by path. This was done in
order to avoid the frikkin' 900MB Flutter submodule for a crate whose source is
around 600KB. Since git submodule update --init is not recursive by itself the
checkout stays at approximately 18MB.
lsd [--json] --discover--discover announces the LSD device, collects the LocalSend devices that
answer and prints them:
$ lsd --discover
D [1] Smart Raspberry (10.0.0.20)
D [2] Juicy Lemon (10.0.0.31)
lsd [--json] --send <DEVICE> <FILE>...--send sends one or more files to a device and exits. The device can be an
alias, a fingerprint, an IP address or an IP:PORT.
Note: An address is contacted directly and skips discovery. Files cannot be directories.
$ lsd --send "Smart Raspberry" report.pdf notes.txt
S Smart Raspberry: Sent 2 files (10.4 MB, took 3s)
Use - in place of a file to read a text message from stdin and send it as a
message rather than a file. Stdin has to be a pipe and can only appear once:
$ echo "Hello World" | lsd --send "Smart Raspberry" -
S Smart Raspberry: Message sent (took 0s)
If - is combined with actual files, then the input is sent as a .txt file.
lsd [--json] --receive--receive waits for a single incoming transfer, accepts it from whoever sends
it, saves the files and exits. A transfer that is a text message is output as
text on the CLI instead of saving it to a file. LSD waits for --timeout
seconds (by default 60 for --receive) before it gives up and exits. This way
you can launch LSD and forget about it, because you don't need to worry that
it's going to run indefinitely.
$ lsd --receive
R Waiting for a transfer (60s)
R Juicy Lemon: Received 2 files (4.1 MB, took 2s)
The --json flag replaces the text with one JSON document on stdout, so a
script/program can parse it:
host=$(lsd --json --discover | jq -r '.devices[0].host')
lsd --json --send "$host" report.pdf | jq .okEvery document carries an ok field. lsd exits 0 when everything worked, 1
when the operation failed, and 2 on a usage error.
--alias, --port and --destination set the device name, the HTTP port and
the directory received files are saved in.
--multicast sets the group used for discovery, which defaults to 224.0.0.167
and only ever needs changing on a network that filters it.
--timeout sets the seconds lsd waits without anything happening, which by
default is 10 seconds for discovery, and 60 seconds for a transfer to arrive or
to advance.
Note: LSD also reads the LOCALSEND_ALIAS, LOCALSEND_PORT,
LOCALSEND_DESTINATION and LOCALSEND_MULTICAST environment variables.
lsd shares its configuration directory with the official localsend-cli
($XDG_CONFIG_HOME/localsend-cli or ~/.config/localsend-cli). It reads
config.toml for alias, port, destination and multicast, and it reads
(or generates) identity.pem, the certificate whose fingerprint identifies this
device.
Both tools appear to the network as the same device, so a peer paired with one
auto-accepts transfers from the other. They also bind the same port and cannot
run at the same time. --port 0 takes a free port instead and works for all
three commands, as the port is carried in its announcement.