Has this happened to you? You're logged into a remote server and trying to read a config file or log file. The problem is its in a minified JSON format and looks like a solid wall of noise when you try to use `less`. You reach for your go-to JSON swiss army knife `jq` but it's not installed! You don't have root access to install it via `apt-get` so you need a script you can run locally. Just copy the `jqjq` and `jqjq.jq` files to your local directory, and now you can access the full power of jq just by running `./jqjq`. Problem solved! And the best part is that the only dependency is `jq`, which should be installed pretty much everywhere.
Jokes aside, this is a actually a pretty common scenario for some people, and I wrote a tool called Exodus to solve it [1]. Exodus makes it trivial to relocate Linux binaries like jq from your local machine [1]. You can simply run
exodus jq | ssh my-server
locally, and then immediately have access to jq on the server. I personally find it very useful when working with servers or containers that have limited package repositories or where I don't have root access.
>Exodus handles bundling all of the binary's dependencies, compiling a statically linked wrapper for the executable that invokes the relocated linker directly, and installing the bundle in ~/.exodus/ on the remote machine.
