+++
date = 2017-05-06T23:31:51+02:00
title = "Repository management with ghq"
[taxonomies]
tags = ["development","git"]
+++

I recently encountered [ghq][], a tool for automatically organising VCS-backed
projects automatically.  Give it a repository URL, it will clone a project to
your projects dir (set by `$GHQ_ROOT`) like so:

```sh
$ ghq get https://github.com/motemen/ghq
# Runs `git clone https://github.com/motemen/ghq ~/.ghq/github.com/motemen/ghq`
```

I don't like the idea of having projects hidden away, so I set
`$GHQ_ROOT` to `$HOME/projects`.

From there, the `list` and `look` subcommands allow listing
repositories and visiting them in the shell (actually a subshell).

I wanted a nicer way to visit project directories.  Since I'm
using [fzf][] as a fuzzy-finder, I thought it would be nice to use it
for this.  I created a simple function, `fp` (find project) to do that:

```sh
fp () {
  ghq look $(ghq list | fzf +m)
}
```

I ran into some issues with the subshell of `ghq look` and wondered
whether it might be possible to create a zsh command to remove the
need for a subshell.

I found that `fzf` includes a [cd-widget function][fzf-cd-widget] and created
something similar that uses `ghq` instead of `find`:

```sh
cd-project-widget () {
  local cmd="ghq list"
  setopt localoptions pipefail 2> /dev/null
  local dir="$(eval "$cmd" | FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS="--height ${FZF_TMUX_HEIGHT:-40%} --reverse $FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS $FZF_ALT_C_OPTS" fzf +m)"
  if [[ -z "$dir" ]]; then
    zle redisplay
    return 0
  fi
  cd $(ghq list --full-path | grep "$dir")
  local ret=$?
  zle reset-prompt
  typeset -f zle-line-init >/dev/null && zle zle-line-init
  return $ret
}
zle -N cd-project-widget
```

It should be quite simple to modify it to work with other
fuzzy-finders.  The basic idea is to show the output of `ghq list` for
selection, and use `ghq list --full-path` with the selected candidate
to print the correct directory for `cd`.

What's really nice about this, is that I can bind it to a key
sequence:

```sh
bindkey '\es' cd-project-widget
```

Now I can press `M-s` in a shell, start typing "nixfiles" and press enter to `cd`
to my [nixfiles][] project. Pretty neat!

[ghq]:https://github.com/motemen/ghq
[fzf]:https://github.com/junegunn/fzf
[fzf-cd-widget]:https://github.com/junegunn/fzf/blob/337cdbb37c1efc49b09b4cacc6e9ee1369c7d76d/shell/key-bindings.zsh#L40-L54
[nixfiles]:https://git.alanpearce.eu/dotfiles