slot - Symbolic Link Organizer with TOML

slot is a lightweight command-line tool for managing symbolic links in your filesystem inspired by stow.

Why?

Because GNU stow does almost what I wanted, but not quite. I wanted a simpler tool that could manage symlinks for multiple packages independent of the source file structure, using a flat configuration. I also need to be able to toogle links on demand to apply different configs.

Demo

Create the slot.toml in the current directory

[packages]
nvim = { source = "./examples/source/nvim", target = "./examples/target/nvim" }
zsh = { source = "./examples/source/zshrc", target = "./examples/target/.zshrc" }

And run

slot link
Linking packages
  nvim: ./examples/target/nvim (new link)
  zsh: ./examples/target/.zshrc (new link)

ls -la examples/target                                                                                                                                                     [1:00:35]
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 4 cris 128 Sep 14 01:00 .
drwxr-xr-x 5 cris 160 Sep 14 01:00 ..
lrwxr-xr-x 1 cris  58 Sep 14 01:00 .zshrc -> /home/cris/slot/./examples/source/zshrc
lrwxr-xr-x 1 cris  57 Sep 14 01:00 nvim -> /home/cris/slot/./examples/source/nvim
cr

Features

• Declarative symlink management with a simple TOML configuration file.
• Create, remove, and check symlinks for multiple packages at once.
• Customizable target directories for each package.
• Check the status of symlinks to detect broken links.

Future features

• Supports pattern matching for including or excluding files.
• Built-in dry-run mode to preview changes before applying them.
• Verbose mode for detailed output.
• Manage same link with diffrent source and toogle between them.

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Usage
• Configuration
• Examples
• License

Installation

With Cargo

You can install Slot using Cargo:

cargo install slot-cli

Usage

The Slot CLI allows you to install, remove, and check symlinks based on a TOML configuration file.

Commands

• link: Create symbolic links for the specified packages.
• unlink: Remove symbolic links for the specified packages.
• status: Check the status of symbolic links.
• list: Display all available packages from the TOML configuration.

Options

• -c --config <file>: Specify a custom TOML configuration file (default: ./slot.toml).
• --help: Display help information.

Basic Usage

Installing Symlinks

To create symlinks for all packages defined in slot.toml:

slot link

To link symlinks for specific packages:

slot link package1 package2

Uninstalling Symlinks

To remove symlinks for all packages:

slot unlink

To unlink specific packages:

slot unlink package1

Checking Symlink Status

To check the status of all symlinks:

slot status
# OR
slot status package1 package2

Listing All Packages

To list all available packages from the TOML configuration:

slot list

Help

For more detailed command usage, run:

slot --help

Configuration

The configuration is defined in a slot.toml file. It specifies the source directories for your packages and where the symlinks should be created.

Example slot.toml:

[packages.package1]
source = "path/to/package1"
target = "/usr/local/bin"

[packages.package2]
source = "path/to/package2"
target = "/home/user/.config"

[packages.package3]
source = "path/to/package3"
target = "/opt/tools"

Fields:

• source: The directory containing the files to be linked.
• target: The directory where the symlinks should be created.

Contributing

Building from Source

To build the project from source, you will need to have Rust installed on your system. You can then clone the repository and build the project using Cargo:

cargo build --release

Running Tests

To run the test suite, you can use the following command:

cargo test

Code Formatting

The project uses rustfmt for code formatting. You can run the following command to format the code:

cargo fmt

License

Slot is licensed under the MIT License.