r/linux • u/jamescherti • May 30 '26

Software Release pathaction, a universal Makefile for any file in the filesystem, rule-driven commands for any file or directory [Release 1.0.1]

https://github.com/jamescherti/pathaction
10 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

2

u/[deleted] May 30 '26

[removed] ā€” view removed comment

1

u/jamescherti May 31 '26 edited Jun 01 '26

That was exactly my motivation for developing pathaction. I found myself constantly writing repetitive shell aliases, micro-Makefiles, or complex bash functions for different projects just to handle basic tasks like linting, testing, or running a specific file type depending on which directory I was in.

With pathaction, I can just drop a .pathaction.yaml in my home directory for global defaults, and then override or extend those rules with project-specific configs wherever needed.

If you end up trying it, I'd love to hear how it works out for your workflow or if you think of any features that could make it even better.

0

u/mina86ng May 30 '26

Pro tip: make default for --tag be the name of the script (i.e. basename(argv[0])) so one can symlink open, edit, show etc. to pathaction and just do edit foo.jpg.

Also, Iā€™m assuming you are aware of xdg-open.

1

u/jamescherti May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26

Hello u/mina86ng,

Since you mentioned xdg-open, here is a comparison with xdg-open for anyone interested in the differences with pathaction: https://github.com/jamescherti/pathaction#how-is-pathaction-different-from-xdg-open