add --directory option (closes #73)

[alistaircarscadden]

No description provided.

[extrawurst]

Hey @alistaircarscadden thanks for looking into this. I love the simplicity of the solution. It did not even cross my mind to do it like that. I was expecting to have to search and change very place I am using CWD.

Does it have any downsides to switch the current working directory in your opinion?

[alistaircarscadden]

@extrawurst
From my systems experience this is the usual way to do this. I think a shell actually does the same thing when you start a process, between fork(2) and exec(3), using chdir(2).

The notable effects are:

• the gitui process will create child processes in it's working directory, which would (after this change) be wherever the user set it with -d.
• relative paths in the process (../, ./somedir) are relative to the working directory, so they'd be relative to the new working directory too.
• the change here does not effect the parent shell of gitui, so when you quit gitui you'd be back in the original directory.

I think these are all behaviours we want gitui to have.

[extrawurst]

Perfect thanks for clarifying! Any shorter alternative to directory? maybe path,folder? What do you think?

Can you also add this to the changelog?

[jugglerchris]

The common short option (used by make and git) would be -C. Make has --directory as a long option.

I quite like --in but I don't know of a precedent. :-)

[alistaircarscadden]

@extrawurst

Can you also add this to the changelog?

Yes.

Any shorter alternative to directory

--dir ?

@jugglerchris

would be -C

At first glance -C/--directory is a bit dissonant to me, but I'm up for whatever.

[extrawurst]

Yes.

Cool!

At first glance -C/--directory is a bit dissonant to me, but I'm up for whatever.

I agree.
Lets stick to -d and --directory 👍

[alistaircarscadden]

Can you also add this to the changelog?

Finished, now.

[extrawurst]

Thanks so much!❤️