Prack (Project Rack)

A CLI project assistant for developers used to avoid repetitive typing of commands while opening a project.

Glossary

• Project alias: A single single word used to identify project
• Command block: A set of commands to be executed in a terminal/prompt
• Command block alias: A short single world used to identify command block for a particular project

Commands

• init: Creates prack.yaml file in project directory.
• add: Register the project using prack.yaml and the commands associated.
• remove <project_alias>: Deregister the project directory
• open <project_alias> <cmd_block_alias>: execute the command block of a project
• list: display list of registered projects

prack.yaml file structre

---
project:
  name: Project Name
  alias: project_alias
  description: Project Description
  tags:
    - tag_1
    - tag_2
  commands:
    - alias: command_alias_1
      commands:
        - command 1
        - command 2
        - command 3
    - alias: command_alias_2
      commands:
        - command 1
        - command 2

Instructions:

1. Navigate inside your project root directory
2. Run prack init and above yaml template is created in your directory
3. Modify the yaml file according to your project requirements.
4. Now run prack add command to store project details.
5. You can run prack open <project_alias> <commnad_block_alias> to execute the required commands. (This can be done from any directory)
6. For any updation in commands, run prack update after making changes in prack.yaml.
7. Run prack list to view the list of projects and their aliases in prack database.
8. For removal of project from prack database, run prack remove <project_alias>.

Sample prack.yaml file

---
project:
  name: Todo List
  alias: todo
  description: A todo list application
  tags:
    - react
    - flask
  commands:
    - alias: frontend
      commands:
        - yarn --cwd /home/ba1ry/os/todolist/frontend start
        - code /home/ba1ry/os/todolist
    - alias: backend
      commands:
        - python3 /home/ba1ry/os/todolist/backend/server.py

Limitation

This project was built with a view that few repetitive shell commands like cd could be avoided typing everytime by storing them in prack.yaml. But it was later discovered that cd and few other commands are not executable commands on the file system and are internal builtin commands of the shell. This further limits the use of this project.