Improvement suggestions

[RaphGL]

Hey, I'm the author of Tuckr. I just stumbled upon your project and decided to give it a shot with my own Tuckr dotfiles for fun.

Here's some feedback:

• the stau uninstall has a confusing description:

Uninstall a package by removing symlinks and copying files back

I'm not really sure what "copying files back" mean here, back to where? There doesn't seem to be much documentation either.

• You're mandating that dotfiles be in ~/dotfiles, that's against the XDG user dirs convention, so I think a nice compromise would be to also add and prefer putting things in .config/dotfiles but also allow putting them in $HOME. But I know many people don't care about littering home, and you already provide a way to override it at least.

• You're reading $HOME to determine the home directory but this is not portable to windows and non unix like OSes, I'm not sure if you care about those OSes

• The way you're detecting symlinks will only work if you're symlinking per file, if I have perfectly valid symlinks but the symlinks are directory, you can detect it. I used to do what you're doing but eventually moved to something like this:

let mut path = Path::from(dotfile);

while let Some(path) = path.pop() {
    if path.is_symlink() && dotfiles::contains_file(path) {
       return true;
    }
}
false

This is more flexible if someone is coming from another tool to yours, migrating becomes easier too.

• Along with the previous point, if a user tries to remove dotfiles from a previous symlink manager to yours (say stow to stau or tuckr to stau) your tool doesn't seem capable of removing the directory symlinks with stau uninstall so that I can install them back with yours

• Consider adding aliases for the most common commands like s for status, i for install, u for uninstall`, etc

[mhalder]

Hey @RaphGL! Thanks so much for taking the time to test stau with your dotfiles and for the detailed feedback. I actually used Tuckr before writing stau - it's a great project and was definitely an inspiration!

I really appreciate your suggestions. Here's my take on each point:

1. Uninstall description - You're absolutely right, that's confusing. The description should be clearer about what actually happens during uninstall.

2. XDG compliance - Great point about .config/dotfiles. I like your compromise approach of preferring XDG-compliant paths while still supporting $HOME for flexibility. Worth noting that the dotfiles directory is already configurable, but defaulting to an XDG-compliant path would be better.

3. Portability - I'm currently focusing on Linux only for stau. I've moved away from macOS, so macOS/Windows support isn't a priority at the moment.

4. Directory symlink detection - This is really valuable feedback. Your recursive algorithm makes a lot of sense and would definitely make migration from other tools easier. I like that it walks up the path checking for symlinks.

5. Migration support - Related to fix: resolve uninstall --dry-run conflict error and add comprehensive option coverage #4, this is an important use case I hadn't fully considered. Being able to cleanly uninstall directory-level symlinks from other managers would definitely smooth the transition.

6. Command aliases - I like this idea for improving UX, especially for frequently used commands.

These are all solid suggestions. I don't have time to implement them immediately, but I'll keep this issue open and tackle them when I get a chance.

Thanks again for the thoughtful feedback!

[github-actions]

🎉 This issue has been resolved in version 1.1.0 🎉

The release is available on:

• v1.1.0
• GitHub release

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