Terminal workflow shortcut

Question

I have all my code projects inside ~/Development/[subject]_dev/[project_folder]

So for example my super-secret projects on mutants > X-Weapon is at:

~/Development/mutants_dev/X-weapon

I'd like to change in my project directory and open the project in TextMate from everywhere (any pwd) in my Shell.

Currently I have this in my .bashrc:

dev() { cd ~/Development/$1_dev/$2 && mate .; }

With this i type dev mutants X-Weapon and I start coding in TextMate.

However I'm not completely satisfied (I'm picky sometimes) and I would like to have TAB autocomplete for $1 and $2. In other words i would like to hit tab and have the shell scope-search into my technologies (a.k.a folders inside Development) and then on my projects.

So for example: dev mu[TAB] becomes dev mutants and then dev mutants X[TAB] becomes... You get it.

Is it possible? How can i set the TAB context? THX

Answer 1

You need to write your own completion function. Here is an example, which you can add to your bashrc.

_dev()
{
    cur=${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}
    if [ $COMP_CWORD -eq 1 ]; then
        COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "$(ls ~/dev)" -- $cur ) )
    elif [ $COMP_CWORD -eq 2 ]; then
        prev=${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD-1]}
        COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "$(ls ~/dev/$prev)" -- $cur ) )
    fi
}

dev() { 
    cd ~/dev/$1/$2 && mate .; 
}

complete -F _dev dev

How it works:

When you type dev [TAB][TAB], the _dev() completion function is invoked. If you are trying to complete the first argument, it runs ls in the dev directory to get a list of all projects. If you are trying to complete the second argument, it runs ls within the project's directory.

For more information take a look at this tutorial: Writing your own Bash Completion Function

Answer 2

Use BDSM 'project' and project edit' functions for workflow navigation

Install bdsm as root (it installs to /usr/local/bdsm/) then in your user's profile,

EDITOR=mate ; export EDITOR
projects_path="$HOME/Development" ; export projects_path

# This loads the interactive bdsm shell functions like 'p' and 'pe'
# which reflect on the set $projects_path and EDITOR environment variables
if [[ -s "/usr/local/bdsm/modules/shell/project/interactive" ]]
  source "/usr/local/bdsm/modules/shell/project/interactive"
fi

Then in your terminal session you can quickly switch to the project,

~ $ p mu X
~/Development/mutants_dev/X-weapon/ $

OR, alternatively, you can both switch in the terminal and launch your EDITOR:

~ $ pe mu X
~/Development/mutants_dev/X-weapon/ $ # mate was also launched on the current directory

Note that it does prefix based matching, so the first matching prefix found first in the projects_path will be what is used. This is nice as it can greatly reduce typing. For example when I am working on BDSM itself I have ~/projects/bdsm/core and /extensions and I can respectively do,

~$ p bd c
~$ p bd e

(I cannot use simply 'p b c' here as I have a ~/projects/bash/ directory as well and that prefix would match first.)

p() and pe() should work in both bash/zsh, if it does not please let me know in #beginrescueend on irc.freenode.net.

Enjoy,

~Wayne

References - https://bdsm.beginrescueend.com/bdsm/install/ - https://bdsm.beginrescueend.com/development/ # no need for core dev setup in this case.