Fwd: [Fab-user] RFC: Implementing a current working directory / path refactoring feature

[Jeff Forcier]

I accidentally cut fab-user out of the rest of this discussion, so
here's a forward of the first reply; I'll forward the others in a
minute. If anyone has any opinions to add, please feel free to chime
in!


On Sat, Nov 22, 2008 at 8:22 AM, Christian Vest Hansen
<address@hidden> wrote:

> What about `put()`?

I don't use put() often yet so of course it slipped my mind :) I could
go either way; there's a number of small things that bother me about
applying fab_cwd to put() (biggest probably that it's not something
that actually applies in "real world" usage: you always have to use
absolute paths with e.g. scp) but on the other hand, it could be
pretty useful and not _too_ much of a metal stretch for users used to
normal scp/shell usage.

What are your own thoughts on put()?

> How about relative paths? The unix command `cd` has a well understood
> behaviour with regards to relative paths, and I think people will
> assume that a `cd()` operation will work the same way.

Yea, definitely. Off the top of my head, simply using os.path methods
(assuming one can't ever SSH to windows systems...? I've never tried
on anything that wasn't running Cygwin) should handle that fine,
right? e.g. if fab_cwd was equal to '/var/www/foo/bar' and one did
cd('../../'), we could do os.path.abspath(os.path.join(fab_cwd,
new_cwd)) to get '/var/www'.

> I think "with cd" reads bad, but on the other hand, I don't anybody
> will really notice. Sadly there's nothing we can do about `with`.

After thinking about it, I'm actually starting to lean *away* from
using `with` -- though if we did use `with`, renaming cd to cwd (just
thought of this) makes much more sense: "with cwd('foo')" sounds way
better IMO.

But, using 'cd' as a normal command/function has a lot of pluses: no
worries about Python 2.4 support, feels more natural from a "I am
shell scripting" standpoint (command, command, cd /var/www, command,
cd ../log, command) and so forth.

If I were adding this feature to Capistrano I think a block would make
sense because that's a Ruby idiom; but it's NOT a Python idiom, even
after the addition of `with`, which isn't really for setting extra
state as much as controlling enter/exit for purposes of cleanup (as
far as I've read). I should try to keep my Ruby out of my Python :)

What do you think? Is it worth trying to set up 'with cwd'; do we just
go with normal command 'cd'; or (don't think this is really a great
idea) do both?

-Jeff