Workdir - a lightweight project management

What it is

Workdir is a not-so-intelligent alternative to projectile and other project management tools for Emacs. It was written because I felt projectile to be too big, too complicated to configure for my needs, and centered too much on the need of programmers. E.g., I do not need to put my project directories under version control. Furthermore, I organize each project with a separate org file, and I want this file to show up in the agenda list. Plus, I wanted to be able to create a new workdir quick and easy, and to move it out of the way just as quick.

So workdir might be of use...

...if you work with changing (possibly small) org-based projects, and you want to be able to navigate quickly between them; and:
...if you like to organize these projects with the help of an org file in which you list all the project-related todo items and other stuff, and these items should show up in the org agenda.

How it works

The whole package is grouped around the notion of a workdir. A workdir is simply a directory containing at least one single file, which is called the worksheet. The package allows you to access these workdirs and to navigate quickly to their respective worksheets.

A workdir thus represents a project, and the worksheet serves as a permant access point to this project. The idea is that you use the worksheet to organize the project. In the worksheet, you store all notes, tasks and other relevant organizational stuff for your project. In the workdir, you store all the files which are interesting for your project.

It is recommended to use an org mode file as a worksheet. Then you can store TODO items which will be presented to you as an org mode sparse tree upon your first visit of that work sheet.

Features

Select, create, move and delete workdirs.
'Archive' a workdir by moving it to a predefined archive directory.
Quickly jump to the worksheet file from any file within the workdir.
Add the currently visited file to the org mode agenda ('register' the file), or remove it. This is useful to fine tune what is shown in the agenda.
Open ibuffer with all files belonging to the current workdir.
Save and kill all buffers belonging to the current workdir (kind of "cleaning up" the buffer space).
If the work sheet is an org mode file, open it with a sparse todo tree (not per default; action is customizable via hook).
All workdirs will be recognized by project.el, so that you can use all project- functions.

Dependencies

Workdir requires emacs >= 26.1 and the package hydra.

For some weird reasons, flycheck keeps telling me that hydra is not installable. I don't know why that should be. If you have any idea how to correct this, please file an issue.

Workdir uses find and awk to find the workdirs and retrieve the titles from the org documents (worksheets). On non-free operating systems, an alternative lisp implementation is used which is unfortunately a tiny bit slower.

Setup

Minimal setup

Minimally, you have to set three variables:

workdir-directories - A list of directory names in which to look for workdirs. Instead of a directory name, you can also use a path to a file name which will then be interpreted as a direct pointer to a work sheet. This way, you can add a single workdir without being forced to add all workdirs within its parent directory. Note that the file name has to be the same as the one defined in workdir-default-sheet (default: konzeptblatt.org).
workdir-archive-directory - A single directory name which is used for 'archiving' work dirs.
workdir-new-dirs-directory - A directory in which new work dirs will be created.

(use-package workdir
   :config
   (setq workdir-directories '("~/Documents/projects" "~/.emacs.d/konzeptblatt.org"))
   (setq workdir-archive-directory  "~/Documents/archive")
   (setq workdir-new-dirs-directory "~/Documents/projects"))

See the section "Variables" below for a more detailed listing of all customizable variables.

Common use cases

All interactive functions try to recognize the "current" work tree by guessing which workdir the currently visited file belongs to. This mechanism also works when visiting a directory via dired.

The most used function will probably be workdir-visit-or-create-worksheet. This function presents a list of all current worksheets. The user can either switch to one of those or enter a non-matching name to create a new workdir.

The second most used function (at least for me) is workdir-archive. When a project is finished, select any workdir and move it to a predefined directory. The operation will be canceled if there are any unsaved files in the directory to be moved. Use workdir-save-and-kill-buffers to safe all buffers belonging to the current worktree.

To find a file in one of the archived workdirs, call workdir-visit-worksheet with a prefix. You will be offered a list of all known directories in which you might find workdirs.

Keybindings

Workdir does not define any key binding by itself. It offers a hydra, however. Bind any key you like to workdir-hydra/body in order to use the hydra.

(use-package workdir
 :config
  (setq workdir-directories           '("~/Documents/projects" "~/.emacs.d/konzeptblatt.org"))
  (setq workdir-archive-directory   "~/Dokumente/archive")
  (setq workdir-new-dirs-directory  "~/Dokumente/projects")
  :bind
  (:map global-map
	("C-x p" . workdir-hydra/body)))

Alternatively, you could adapt the following bindings:

(use-package workdir
	:bind
	(:map global-map
		("C-x p s" . workdir-visit-or-create-worksheet)
		("C-x p r" . workdir-go-to-root)
		("C-x p i"  . workdir-ibuffer)
		("C-x p d" . workdir-delete)
		("C-x p a" . workdir-archive)
		("C-x p +" . workdir-register)
		("C-x p -"  . workdir-unregister)
		("C-x p k" . workdir-save-and-kill-buffers)))

Variables

You can customize the following variables:

workdir-default-sheet: Name used when creating new work sheets. Currently defaults to `konzeptblatt.org`. This is german and means 'a sheet of paper for conceptual stuff'.
workdir-directories: List of directories which might contain workdirs. Each element is either a directory path or the direct path to a worksheet. Note that a direct path to a worksheet is compared against `workdir-default-sheet`, so do not forget to update this variable if you choose another default directory name.
workdir-archive-directory: Default directory for archiving workdirs.
workdir-new-dirs-directory: Default directory when creating new workdirs
workdir-use-find-binary: Use `find` to determine the workdirs; else use a (slower) alternative using elisp.
workdir-use-awk-binary: Use `awk` to determine the titles of the worksheets; else use a (slower) alternative using elisp.
workdir-visit-worksheet-hook: Hook with a list of functions which are called when visiting a work sheet the first time. The functions are called with the work sheet file as the current buffer and should not accept any argument.

Changelog

Current

Move default branch to main
Improve (and slow down) completion when not using awk
Some clean up of the code.

0.3.

Partial rewrite. The older versions used a persistent data base. This dependency has been removed now, there is no data base any more. The list of available workdirs is constructed anew each time the program prompts for a workdir.

0.2

First release you should be able to depend upon. Works like a charm for quite some time by now.

publicimageltd/workdir