Ad-Hoc Dispatcher

Create ad-hoc macros to be dispatched within their own namespace.

Table of contents

• What does ahd do?
  • Features & Roadmap
    • Path Expansion
    • Cross Platform
    • Dynamic Execution & Organization
    • Roadmap
  • Example use cases
• Why should I use ahd?
• Who is ahd for?
• Quick Start
  • Dependencies
  • Installation
    • From PyPi
    • From Source
  • Usage
    • Register
    • Using a Registered Command
    • List
    • Docs
    • Config
• Contact/Contribute
• Glossary

Additional Documentation

This readme will give you enough information to get up and running with ahd. If you are confused about terminology used then take a look at the glossary section of the docs. If you are looking for more in-depth documentation:

• Additional user and development/contribution documentation will be available at https://ahd.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
• API documentation is available at https://kieranwood.ca/ahd

What does ahd do?

ahd allows you to take annoying to remember commands and organize them into easy to re-use macros.

Features & Roadmap

Path Expansion

• Macros can take full advantage of wildcards + regex to match directories.
  For example if you wanted to delete all PDFs in all folders on the desktop you can use sudo ahd register no-pdfs "rm *.pdf" "~/Desktop/*".
• nix and windows path adages are cross-platform. For example ~ is converted to %USERPROFILE% on windows, \ paths are converted to / on nix systems and vice-versa.

Cross platform

• ahd natively supports windows and any *nix systems (including Mac OS).
• Supports copy-paste cross platform configurations (assuming the same commands and file structure are on both)
  For example if you want to write a command that git pulls in a folder called /development on your desktop using the *nix standard ~/Desktop/development/* works on both *nix and windows.

Dynamic Execution & Organization

• One YAML file contains the configuration for all your macros instead of being all over the place.
• Macros can be updated manually (editing the YAML file), or simply re-registered.
• The defined Paths and commands can be overwritten on each use (see overriding for details).

Roadmap

A full roadmap for each project version can be found here: https://github.com/Descent098/ahd/projects

Example use cases

Really the possibilities are only limited to what you can type in your regular terminal, but here are some good examples:

• Update every git repo in a directory
• Organize your downloads folder by various filetypes
• Multi-stage project compilation/build in various directories

Why should I use ahd?

The easiest way to understand why this project is useful is with an example. Let’s say you want to write a simple script to take all the PDF’s in a directory and put them in a .7z archive and then remove them. Well all you need is this simple command 7za a -t7z PDFs.7z *.pdf && rm *.pdf…

Yeah, pretty awful to remember. Assuming we want to do this every so often let’s make a script we can call. Currently with bash you need to drop the script in usr/bin (and try to remember what you called it), or add it to your bash/fish/zsh aliases (assuming you use the alias file, or .bashrc etc. if you don’t), and on windows it’s just not even worth it.

Enter ahd, you can register a macro (lets call it zip-pdfs) using the same annoying command, in this case sudo ahd register zip-pdfs "7za a -t7z PDFs.7z *.pdf && rm *.pdf" ".". Now when we want to re-use this macro in the directory we’re in you just type ahd zip-pdfs.

If you forget the name there’s a list command, and if you use a longer name there’s bash autocomplete (fish and zsh support coming later).

Who is ahd for?

The primary audience is developers looking to speed up annoying workflows. However there are a number of other people it could benefit, such as:

• devops specialists; can use ahd to create a common set of macros across servers .
• dual booters; people who want one common config for multiple OS’s.
• testers; if you need to execute multiple tests on various systems you can write one macro to run them all.
• etc; people who are sick of having a bunch of random scripts everywhere and want one config file for complex commands.

Quick-start

Dependencies

• Python 3.6+ (or is at least only tested and officially supported for 3.6+)
• pip for python

Installation

Once you have python3 and pip you have a few installation options.

From Pypi

Run pip install ahd or sudo pip3 install ahd (need a network connection)

From source

1. Clone this repo: (https://github.com/Descent098/ahd)
2. Run pip install . or sudo pip3 install .in the root directory (one with setup.py)

Usage

Usage: 
    ahd [-h] [-v]
    ahd list [-l]
    ahd docs [-a] [-o]
    ahd config [-e] [-i CONFIG_FILE_PATH]
    ahd register <name> [<command>] [<paths>]
    ahd <name> [<command>] [<paths>] [-d]
Options:
    -h, --help            show this help message and exit
    -v, --version         show program's version number and exit
    -l, --long            Shows all commands in configuration with paths and commands
    -a, --api             shows the local API docs
    -o, --offline         shows the local User docs instead of live ones
    -e, --export          exports the configuration file
    -i CONFIG_FILE_PATH, --import CONFIG_FILE_PATH 
                        imports the configuration file
    -d, --details         prints the details of a command

Register

The register command allows you to register a command to be used later on.

Required Arguments:

• \; This is a positional placeholder value for the name of a command you are registering. Once the command is registered you can run it by using ahd <name>.

• \; This is a positional placeholder value for the macro you want to run when the command is used after being registered. For example if you wanted to delete all the PDF’s in a directory the macro you would normally run is rm *.pdf and so you would do ahd register <name> "rm *.pdf" <paths>.

  It is generally advised to use encapsulating quotes since this avoids argument parsing artifacts.

• \; This is a positional placeholder value for the path(s) that you want the command to run the macro in by default. For example if you wanted to a command to execute a macro on the desktop when it’s run you can do ahd register <name> <command> "~/Desktop".

  It is generally advised to use encapsulating quotes since this avoids argument parsing artifacts. Additionally you can specify multiple directories through comma delimiting, for example: ahd register <name> <command> "~/Desktop, ~/Documents, ~/Pictures", or you can use path expansion which will match directories through regex or wildcards. For example to run a command in all directories within the desktop you could do ahd register <name> <command> "~/Desktop/*" or just use regex to match paths more explicitly for example to only include folders on the desktop that are numbers between 0-9 you could do: ahd register <name> <command> "~/Desktop/[0-9]".

Using a Registered Command

You can use a registered command by simply typing ahd <name>, where <name> is whatever name you gave to the command.

Optional Arguments:

• \; This is an optional positional argument that lets you overwrite the command, while retaining the registered paths. For example lets say you have a set of paths registered with a command that typically runs git pull over the specified paths. You want to run a different command on the paths (lets say remove all the pdfs in the folder) You can do: ahd <name> "rm *.pdf" which will execute rm *.pdf instead of git pull on the defined paths.

  It is generally advised to use encapsulating quotes since this avoids argument parsing artifacts.

• \; This is an optional positional argument that lets you overwrite the paths the command will run against. To retain the original command you must use a “.”. So for example lets say you have a command registered that runs git pull against ~/Desktop/*, but now you want to run git pull against ~/Documents/* you can use ahd <name> "." "~/Documents/*" and it will run the macro against ~/Documents/* instead of ~/Desktop/*

  It is generally advised to use encapsulating quotes since this avoids argument parsing artifacts. Additionally you can specify multiple directories through comma delimiting, for example: ahd register <name> <command> "~/Desktop, ~/Documents, ~/Pictures", or you can use path expansion which will match directories through regex or wildcards. For example to run a command in all directories within the desktop you could do ahd register <name> <command> "~/Desktop/*" or just use regex to match paths more explicitly for example to only include folders on the desktop that are numbers between 0-9 you could do: ahd register <name> <command> "~/Desktop/[0-9]".

list

The list command shows a list of your current registered commands.

Optional Arguments:

• -l or --long: Shows all commands in configuration with the registered paths and macros.

docs

The docs command is designed to bring up documentation as needed, you can run ahd docs to open the documentation site in the default browser.

Optional Arguments:

• -a or --api: Used to serve local API documentation (Not yet implemented)

• -o or --offline: Used to serve local user documentation (Not yet implemented)

config

This command is used for configuration management. It is recomended to use register to register/update commands. The config command is for managing configurations manually take a look at the documentation for details about manual configuration.

Optional Arguments:

-e --export: Export the current configuration file (called ahdconfig.yml)

-i --import: Import a configuration file; takes the path to the config file as an argument

Contact/Contribute

For a full contribution guide, check the contribution section of the documentation. Also be sure to check the faq before submitting issues.

For any additional questions please submit then through github here (much faster response), or my email kieran@canadiancoding.ca.