dtags 2.0.6

Directory Tags for Lazy Programmers

Introduction

Do you have too many git repositories or vagrant machines to manage? Does your work require you to switch between the same directories over and over? Are you a lazy programmer who is always looking ways to type less? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then dtags may be for you!

Features

dtags is a lightweight command line tool which lets you:

• Tag and un-tag directories

• Change directories quickly via tags

• Execute commands in multiple directories at once

All commands come with tab-completion.

Installation

Step 1: Check requirements

• Python 2.7+ or 3.4+

• Recent version of pip

• Recent version of Bash, Zsh or Fish with tab-completion enabled

Step 2: Install the package:

# You may need to sudo depending on your setup
~$ pip install --upgrade dtags

Step 3: Add the following line to your shell runtime configuration:

# For zsh, place in ~/.zshrc:
command -v dtags > /dev/null 2>&1 && eval "`dtags shell zsh`"

# For bash, place in ~/.bashrc (or ~/.bash_profile for OS X):
command -v dtags > /dev/null 2>&1 && eval "`dtags shell bash`"

# For fish, place in ~/.config/fish/config.fish:
command -v dtags > /dev/null 2>&1; and dtags shell fish | source

Step 4. Restart your shell.

Note for those who are upgrading from v1.x.x:
  dtags v2 has config changes that are not backwards-compatible.
  If you want to keep your tags, you need to run a migration script:

   ~$ git clone https://github.com/joowani/dtags.git
   ~$ python dtags/scripts/migrate.py

  If you don't mind losing them, simply run 'rm -rf ~/.dtags' instead.

Once installed, you will have 5 commands at your disposal: tag, untag, d, e and dtags. Make sure you don’t have any linux aliases, functions or symlinks etc. with the same names.

Usage Examples

Tag directories with tag:

~$ tag ~/web dev work   # add tags 'dev' and 'work' to ~/web
~$ tag ~/app            # tag ~/app with its basename, 'app'

Un-tag directories with untag:

~$ untag ~/web dev      # remove tag 'dev' from ~/web
~$ untag ~/app          # remove all tags from ~/app

Change directories with d (designed to fully replace cd!):

~$ d                    # go to the user's home directory
~$ d frontend           # go to the directory tagged 'frontend'
~$ d tag_with_many_dirs # prompt the user to select a specific directory
~$ d ~/app              # go to directory ~/app

Execute commands in one or more directories with e:

~$ e repo git status    # execute 'git status' in directories tagged 'repo'
~$ e ~/vm vagrant halt  # execute 'vagrant halt' in directory ~/vm
~$ e -p vm git pull     # execute 'git pull' in directories tagged 'vm' in parallel
~$ e vm,~/foo ls        # execute 'ls' in directories tagged 'vm' and ~/foo

Search and manage tags with dtags:

~$ dtags list           # display the directories-to-tags mapping
~$ dtags list ~/app     # display the tags and directories associated with ~/app
~$ dtags list foo bar   # display the tags and directories associated with 'foo' or 'bar'
~$ dtags reverse        # display the tags-to-directories mapping
~$ dtags edit           # edit tags and directories via editor like vim
~$ dtags clean          # remove invalid or stale tags and directories

You can always use the --help option to find out more!

Technical Notes

• Windows is currently not supported

• The directory-to-tags mapping is saved in ~/.dtags/mapping

• Tags are also saved on their own in ~/.dtags/tags for tab-completion

• e -p hangs on interactive commands that wait on input (no easy way around this)

• e -p spawns child processes and redirects their output to temporary files and then to stdout

• e -p sends sigterm to its child processes when killed

• e uses environment variable $SHELL to guess which shell is in use

• e redirects all stderr to stdout and should always return an exit status of 0

• e executes the commands using interactive shell, which has pros and cons:

  • e can properly use linux functions and aliases

  • The shell runtime configuration must be “sourced” each time the command is run

  • The performance of e is affected by the shell startup time (beware oh-my-zsh users)

  • Any errors thrown during the “sourcing” will show up in the output of e

• dtags edit uses environment variable $EDITOR

• d requires grep, cut, seq and /dev/null

• d expects ~/.dtags/mapping to be correctly formatted:

  • Please refrain from editing ~/.dtags/mapping directly

  • Instead, use dtags edit which does the validation and formatting for you

• Tab-completion expects ~/.dtags/tags to be correctly formatted:

  • Don’t touch this file at all if possible

  • If this is deleted, it is auto-generated the next time a dtags command is run.