dockerfiles VS khard

I'm aware of that approach for Python, and Bundler can be configured to do a similar thing for Ruby. Those are good approaches for development environments (though I generally prefer Docker for those these days), but for system tools I think that's just kind of a hassle and I don't want to do it.

For a tool I install & use, my happy path is "install it with my package manager, and then stop thinking about it". Upgrades will happen whenever I decide to ask my package manager to upgrade everything. (I use Arch Linux, so that's usually once or twice a week.)

Needing to hand-setup an installation like that for a program makes me cranky. I've certainly done it when there wasn't a good alternative (and also occasionally wrap programs in docker containers as well if it's easier - https://github.com/wfleming/dockerfiles), but it's the kind of thing that makes me pause and reconsider whether I really care enough to use whatever the program is.

For those not into Emacs: Khard is a nice address book for the Unix console https://github.com/lucc/khard

I still use carddav to backup the contacts on my phone, but mu4e will autocomplete the address of any contact you ever had an email exchange with, so you will have access immediately to next to your full contact list anyway. You can still use khard and vdirsyncer if you ever find yourself needing a contact from your phone.

Another comment already mentioned Khard, which has been around a while. [0]

There's also Mates [1]. Less mature, very simple, but it's what I personally use.

I try to steer away from relying on CLI tools implemented in python or ruby: at the system level they always seem to cause dependency hell problems eventually. Mates is implemented in Rust, so it's compiled, which is primarily why I chose it.

An important related project is vdirsyncer [2]. Ppl, khard, and mates all store data in vcard format but don't talk to APIs or sync anything. Vdirsyncer can sync your vcard collection with your email provider or what have you.

[0] https://github.com/scheibler/khard