Recurse into subdirectories to find dot.yaml

[AdamYellen]

Should Rotz recurse into all subdirectories? I'd like to organize some of my apps into subdirectories so my dotfiles folder isn't massive.

[volllly]

Hey, I like that idea 🙏

A few ways how to implement something like this come to mind.

Automatically recurse empty folders

Just recurse empty folders until a dot.yaml file is found.

This does not need any new configuration.

This could lead to two dots with the same name though (if you rotz install abc and have the folders def/abc/dot.yaml and ghi/abc/dot.yaml). Could be solved by making dot names paths (rotz install def/abc).

Add workspace.yaml file

Add a workapace.yaml file which works kind of like cargo workspaces.

You denote the folders you have there like so:

workspaces:
  - somefolder
  - path: otherfolder
    name: othername

These folders then can contain a dots.yaml file and folders containing dot.yaml files like usual. Also they could contain an other workspace.yaml file for nested workspaces.

Add a global --workspace flag to rotz commands to select a workspace. In dependencies depend on dots from other workspaces like this depends: [ workspace/nested:app ].

Rename dots.yaml to workspace.yaml

Same as above but merge defaults and workspaces.

workspaces:
  - somefolder
defaults:
  windows:
    installs: scoop install {{ name }}

Note: Support for dots.yaml files would be deprecated but not removed immediately.

---

I think I prefer something like the last option. Workspaces open the door for possible other features like importing another dotfile repo as a workspace. There's some configuration effort but I think it's fairly minimal

I'm interested to know what you think :)

[kecrily]

I love the first one. I think we already have workspace, each folder is a workspace. If we need to depend on other dot, then everything is fine relative to the root directory. Also, perhaps a non-recursive flag could be added.

rotz install something

Recursively install all the dots in the something folder

rotz install something --non-recursive

Install only something/dots.yml.

[AdamYellen]

Solution 1 and 2/3 are orthogonal. Both sound useful.

To solve the problem of duplicate names the user could always specify the full "path" if there is a conflict:

rotz install <workspace>/<dir>/<name>

[volllly]

Thanks @AdamYellen and @kecrily for your helpful input 🙏

I'm thinking of doing the following which is basically solution 1 😁

Recurse nested folders and treat dot names as paths. If the folders contain a defaults file merge it with the parent defaults and use it for child dots.

Dot names in the cli and the depends sections are glob patterns.

rotz install devtools/* installs all dots in the devtools folder.

rotz install **/vim installs all dots named vim in any folder.

rotz install * installs all dots in the root folder (like before).

rotz install ** installs all dots in any folder.

depends: [ ../package-managers/scoop ] uses a path relative to the current dot.

I think this will work nicely without being to complex (Not like solution 2/3) and if needed we can still add a workflow.yaml file later on in a backwards compatible way.

[AdamYellen]

Sounds good.

[volllly]

Hey, the newest release v0.7.0 contains the functionality to nest dots 🎉

Let me know if something is not working as expected :)

[kecrily]

rotz install is fine, but rotz link throw Warning: No dots found when I run it in dotfiles root dir. Even when I specify dot manually, it says it can't find it.

[volllly]

Ah.. sorry about that.

Should be fixed in v0.7.1