FS-NAVIGATION

I really like to use alias to move between my directory tree, but adding an alias isn't as comfortable as I wanted it to be. So I decided that would allow me to move between my directories fast and in a very confortable way. I also plan to add new functionalities to what a simple alias can do.

TODO:

• write a simple deployment method as the one I am using now
• write the other part of the installation and deployment method :)
• add a remove command
• add that special inner dir record insert
• think of a new way to store records
  • Use protocol buffer make a bridge between C and C++
• Add a recursive set to a folder <folder> where it's sub folder are added with names <folder>/<sub-folder>
• Increase the space locality of fs-navigation

IDEAS:

• Turn this into a real alias.
• Instead of records pointing to files they will now point to commands.
• That can be one of three types:
  • General pupose (just like alias)
  • Directories (works just like the current version of fs)
  • Files (opens them using the open command)

how to does it work? It's very easy to use.

After following the instalation guide you can run fs in you terminal and it will display the following menu:

fs-commands:
    * set <name> [ <path> ] - set's <name> path to <path>
    * get <name>            - moves to the path of <name> if such exists
    * rm  <name>            - removes record which name is <name> if such exists
    * mv  <name> <new-name> - changed record name from <name> to <new-name>
    * <name>                - alias for get <name>
    * list                  - list all record entries stored
    * help                  - prints help message

As you see the main commands are:

• get [record-name]
• set [record-name] [record-path]
• rm [record-name]
• mv [record-name] [new-record-name]
• list

Records are tuples (something that holds 2 values) in which the name is unique.

get command

fs get <a-record-name>

It will move us to the path that is associated with such name or print an error.

We could just run :

fs <a-record-name>

instead of fs get, It will work for all the record names that are not equal to one of the commands name.

set command

To set a record or to change a path of a record, we run

fs set <a-record-name> <a-record-path>

then fs (the name of the program c: ) will check if the path is is valid (exists and it's a directory). If it's not, it will report and an error and not perform the operation.

Note: the path given to fs can be relative to the current directory of a full path (starting with /) or we could specify no path and it will take the current directory as the record path.

rm command

We can also remove records by running:

fs rm <record-name-1> <record-name-2> ... <record-name-n>

If one of the <record-name-i> doest exists it will abort the operation and it won't save the changes to the disk which means none record will be removed.

mv command

To change the name associated with a record path we can run:

fs mv <old-record-name> <new-record-name>

If <new-record-name> is an name of one record such record will be removed (this behaviour could be discussed on a issue).

Base file

The file where the records are stored by default it's ~/.fs-nav. But you can change that by setting the environment variable FS_BASE_FILE.

Installing

You can install by run the following command:

sudo ./fs-install.sh /opt

This will install fs-navigation in /opt folder, more about it below.

Understand install script

The usage of the script is the following:

usage: fs-install.sh <base-dir> <rc-file (optional)> "

Where base-dir is the directory where fs-navigation will be installed (I used /opt but you choose yours). This means will create a folder and inside this one it will have the files fs-navigation needs to run. And rc-file is the run command file or profile file of your shell. (eg. if it's bash the rc-file is ~/.bashrc if its zsh it's ~/.zshrc, any other just google c:)

If you don't specify the rc-file in the end will pop-up this message to you:

** commands for your rc-file **
You need to copy the following to your rc-file:

BASE_DIR=<a-dir-name-c:>
export FS_EXE=$BASE_DIR/bin/fs-exe
source $BASE_DIR/script.sh

You will need to paste the two last lines of it into your rc-file, otherwise fs-navigation won't work.

If we had this already working and the only thing you want to do is to update it. You only need to run:

./fs-install.sh

The only thing that needs to be done is to replace your older files with news. No change needs to be done in your rc-file so you should not specify it.

If you want to install it on a new directory just re-run the usage described above, and be sure to remove the lines fs-install.sh added (or that you added) to your rc-file, and of course delete the files in the previous folder.

Requirements

This tool is made of a script file and some C code. In order to install it you will need to have installed: makefile and a C compiler (I will eventually make the binaries avaible so there is no need to compile). And in order to run it I you need a shell interpreter like bash. (I used zsh develop and test this project)

It wasn't tested on windows so I offer no guarantees. But I can say that it works fine for unix based systems.