files in config get overwritten

[jankatins]

I my case it's problematic for aliases but the other files might also be problematic. IMO config should be empty apart form a readme.md file and either be populated by vendor\init.bat or cmder itself.

Only the conemu.xml file is overwritten, everything else is generated on first start.

[jankatins]

I think at least two things should be moved out of the config dir: aliases and cmder.lua.

For the latter it's I think the easiest to move it to vendor/cmder.lua and add a line to load the file which loads config/config.lua if it exist.

Not sure what to do about the aliases file, if it is cmd only, it could be copied in init.bat

[daxgames]

Is it possible for the config/aliases file to stay where it is so the cmder team can include 'default' aliases and also the use of a user-aliases file in the config folder that is loaded after the config/aliases if it exists not overwritten on update.

The alias.bat file would need to be modified to add user aliases to config/user-aliases instead of config/aliases.

Not even sure if it is possible, I'm not a doskey guru, but this provides the best of both worlds.

[jankatins]

I currently use config\aliases_jasc and source that in my user_startup.bat file. AFAI understand it, the current aliases are examples, not things the user should have/ are needed by cmder.

IMO: move the current config\aliases file to vendor\aliases.example and let vendor\init.bat copy that to the config dir, if it does not exist. And then let doskey load it.

[jankatins]

If #736 gets merged, only ConEmu.xml and settings are in there. Not sure how to handle them, if it should go the same way as #735/#736, then cmder.exe must do the copy.

But on the other hand, I've actually no idea how the ConEmu.xml file is handled (#695 and #427). And actually, after the changes in the new release, I don't think I have to do anything in this files, so I'm fine after these two PRs :-)

[daxgames]

What do you guys think of my suggestion of having a cmder team controlled aliases file that is loaded first then a config\user-aliases file that is loaded second? This would require making the bin\alias.bat manage config\user-aliases.

I have verified this would work and it is an easy change.

I have about a lot of aliases, mostly Git related, that make most Git commands 1-5 characters for both cmd and bash. I could also look at making these work Powershell. It would be nice to add these to Cmder.

A user could override any included macro with his own by adding it to the config/user-aliases, config/user-profile.ps1, or config/user-profile.sh.

Edit: Unfortunately Powershell's new-alias and set-alias are lame and cannot make aliases that have command line arguments. So really useful Powershell aliases are not likely to happen.

[jankatins]

I'm against a cmder controlled alias file if you couldn't "unalias" any alias in it.

[daxgames]

ConEmu.xml could be handled I a similar way I am handling cmder.sh and similarly to the way you handled aliases. There could be a default vendor/conemu.xml.default file that is copied to the config dir by Cmder.exe if it does not already exist before it launches ConEmu.exe. This requires changes to cmder.exe that I cannot do or I would and create a PR. Somebody? :-)

This plus your cmder.lua suggestion just leaves the settings file to deal with. Not even sure what it does but it could be handled in a similar way as well leaving the config/ dir a create on demand and purely for user config that is never overwritten. I like it.

[rmorrin]

I have about a lot of aliases, mostly Git related, that make most Git commands 1-5 characters for both cmd and bash.

@daxgames Sorry to hijack the thread, but how do you manage aliases for both cmd and bash on Windows? I currently switch between both frequently (from within cmder of course) and up until now have been duplicating aliases; once in config/aliases and once in a .aliases file in my home directory (which I source in .bashrc). I'd love to find a cleaner way of doing this!

[MartiUK]

Same for PowerShell as well really, should we keep the doskey syntax and write something to parse it for bash and Ps? Or have something completely different?

[daxgames]

@rmorrin I am right there with you. I currently have two files. One for bash and one for cmd. Powershell aliases suck so they will never be as functional as cmd/sh.

[daxgames]

@MartiUK - I think coding some bash to parse the config/aliases file and convert it to bash aliases would not be too tough as long and that file did not contain any Doskey special characters like $B, $G, $L, $T $$, and $*.

The problems I see are not all macros will work in bash and cmd and if you want to save macros in bash you would have to manually edit the config/aliases files in doskey format. Just seems clunky and error prone. Powershell aliases can only alias a single command with no arguments to a single probably shorter command so it is pointless to worry about converting doskey/sh aliases to Powershell. They just do not work right.

[Jackbennett]

Powershell aliases can only alias a single command with no arguments to a single probably shorter command so it is pointless to worry about converting doskey/sh aliases to Powershell. They just do not work right.

Correct and I agree but there's nothing to stop you just making a function in the PS profile that does the alias you require. You can even make a nice descriptive named function and alias that to type in.

i.e I have:

function get-list{
    get-childitem @args | format-wide -autosize
}
Set-Alias lsa get-list

#...other things
# CD to my projects folder at startup
lsa -Directory

more examples, albeit an old file now noteworthy: touch, swap-python or from my other file git-server

[jankatins]

Current status (for cmd): Only the conemu.xml file is overwritten, everything else is generated on first start.

[daxgames]

@JanSchulz PR#1109 - Addresses the above by backing up the ./vendor/conemu-maximus5/conemu.xml file if it exist at startup to ./config/ConEmu-%COMPUTERNAME%.xml OR ./config/user-ConEmu.xml if one or the other already exists in that order.

If neither exists the backup will default to ./config/user-ConEmu.xml this maintains a portable copy of changes made to this file while using cmder that will persist across new installs and updates