Hardlinks

[lonix1]

First off @Gruntfuggly congratulations on another fine extension... funny how many great extensions you've made!

Use case:

• config files to be shared by multiple projects
• to commit those config files to source control in each project (it's common practice to include config in source control)

Problem:

If I use the "copy" option, then the config cannot be easily changed for all projects at once (I'd need to rerun the extension for every project upon every config change), but I can commit those config files to git.

If I use the "symlink" option, then I can easily change config for all projects at once, but I cannot commit the config files to git (the symlink itself is committed, not the target file in ~/.vscode).

Solution:

A "hardlink" option (fs.link). This would be backward compatible for existing users, and would allow the use case above. It should be cross platform.

What do you think?

[Gruntfuggly]

Seems perfectly reasonable 🙂 I'll add it as a separate config setting, so that it will definitely be backward compatible.

[lonix1]

Looking forward to that!

I'm on linux BTW, so let me know if you want me to test it for you on linux.

[Gruntfuggly]

I can do linux/macos no problem. It's Windows that's a pain. But links in Windows are a whole different game anyway, so it's probably easier implement it and wait for somebody to complain!

[Gruntfuggly]

Try the latest version - seems to work fine for me on macos.

[lonix1]

I've installed v0.0.12 but the new global-config.hardLinks setting isn't available...

How/where can I download the new version?

[Gruntfuggly]

Sorry - the publish failed and I didn't notice. 0.0.13 should be available in a couple of minutes.

[Gruntfuggly]

OK - it's available now.

[lonix1]

Works nicely, thanks!!!

It's really useful extension when you have loads of projects, and you want the same config in all of them. :smile:

[Gruntfuggly]

Thanks - I find it useful because I tend to open lots of code workspaces within the same project. Makes it easier for searching, etc. 🙂

[lonix1]

One question, I fiddled around with subdirectories until I realised it detects multiple subdirs and allows me to choose between them, which is a cool feature (you can have multiple config "sets").

But do I need to specify specifically which files gets copied/linked (in that array), or can I make it pull all of them found in a subdir?

[Gruntfuggly]

lol - I'm not sure. It just uses copySync from fs-extra. From the docs, it sounds like it copies directory contents too, so I think it will just work on the directory itself.

I assumed it would never be used for anything much more complicated than copying tasks.json, settings.json, etc.

[lonix1]

Actually let me play around with it and open a separate issue about that, I think it's actually a little more involved than I thought at first glance! I want to do some testing....

[Gruntfuggly]

It iterates over the contents of the specified directory, so I'm not sure if it handles the contents of subdirectories directly or not. It logs each 'file' it finds in the output channel, so you should be able to see what it is doing.