Moving build dir to another directory

[dlight]

Here's some weird thing I do: I have a directory outside home where I put my target, node_modules etc, and I put symlinks on the project dirs. Those "shadow" directories are arranged in the same directory tree as the home directory. When I delete such build artifacts, I don't delete the directory that contains it (so I do not break the symlink). I do this to keep backups small.

I think your tool can help automate this workflow. I could pass a directory to it and it would move build dirs and set up symlinks. I may send a PR if you wish.

Anyway, thanks for this tool!

[tbillington]

That's really interesting! I'm a fan of symlinks myself. I'll have a think about it. It does seem somewhat of a deviation from the goal of this project but I do like the idea.

I hope this isn't too presumptuous but I'd encourage you to write a minimal version and put it up on Github :) Perhaps there will be more people interested in such a thing thank you think! I'd be happy to mention it in the readme of kondo.

For example I have thought about making a tool to "manage" symlinks before. To inform me of where I've made them, where they point etc.

I'm going to close this issue for now because it's not actionable but I appreciate that you took the time to make it :) !

[dlight]

Uhm, perhaps something that could fit kondo is to have a flag that execs a command for each build directory? Like fd -x or find -exec.

[tbillington]

@dlight Hmmm, that's actually a really good idea. Do you think this feature would cover that use case for you? #9

[dlight]

I think that printing and executing a command should be two separate flags.

Or alternatively, if you want to pipe a list of directories to another tool in a robust way it should be \0-separated, and not \n-separated (that's why find has a -print0 option), because directories can themselves contain \n in their names. But if you want to display this list in most situations, '\0' is obnoxious.

[dlight]

Also: with an execute flag you can pass many parameters to the program, such as: the project type (stack/rust/etc), the project root directory, and the build directory. To print a rich data like that you need a serialization format (many programs use json)

[tbillington]

because directories can themselves contain \n in their names.

😱

Ok good point, I will strongly consider the execute option, it makes a lot of sense. Do you think modeling it off find and fd is a good idea? Are there any other tools you use with an execute option that pass multiple fields as arguments?

[dlight]

Are there any other tools you use with an execute option that pass multiple fields as arguments?

Not that I remember, but find and fd pass the parameter as '{}', like this

fd -x echo a '{}' b
find -exec echo a '{}' b \;

fd alternatively lets you omit the '{}', implicitly inserting it at the end

fd -x echo a # same as fd -x echo a '{}'

Incidentally, this similar enough to println!() syntax that kondo could just use {kind}, {root} and {build} like this

kondo -x echo '{kind}', '{root}', '{build}'
# prints (for example) Cargo, /home/x/proj, /home/x/proj/target

Or maybe kondo could just not have {param}, and always pass it as the three first parameters (this is bad because adding fourth parameter would be backwards incompatible)