LordCommander

LordCommander is a command line program to run shell commands recursively through predefined directories.

See full changelog here.

Contents

• Dependencies
• Installation
• Upgrading from v4.x to v5.x
• Usage
  • Project handling
    • See project list
    • Add new project
    • Set/Change active project
    • Remove a project
    • Rename a project
  • Directory/Instance handling
    • See directory list
    • Adding directories
    • Removing directories
  • Running commands
    • Throttled execution
    • Exclude directories from execution
    • Run only for specified directories
  • Utilities
    • Searching for a directory
    • See total number of directories
    • Dumping and restoring data

Dependencies

• ^Python 3.7.5
• Python Fire
• Colr

Installation

Run following command to install LordCommander:

pip install lordcommander

It will be available as lc in your environment, and you can run commands like:

lc <command> <args> <flags>

Upgrading from v4.x to v5.x

Since version 5.x LordCommander will be a python package instead of individual project and the data directory is changed as a standard package should behave. Here is how you should upgrade to 5.x:

First, take a backup of your data

./lc utils dump ~/

It would create a lcdb_dump.json file in your home directory. After that, remove existing LordCommander folder and install it using pip. Henceforth, you can restore data using the backup file just as before. The commands remain same.

Usage

How to run commands using LordCommander?

1. Add some projects to LordCommander.
2. Set a project as active.
3. Add some instances of that project.
4. Run a command.

You can append --help after each command always to see the manual.

Project Handling

See project list

To see added projects to LordCommander, run:

lc proj view

The active project will be check marked.

Add new project

To add a new project, you have to specify the path of the project directory. Usually the last part of the path is taken as the project name but you can specify a custom name for the project using the --name flag. Remember, this is not the location of individual project, i.e. directories where the command will run are inside this location. Run:

lc proj add /home/sowrensen/test/project-a --name=customname

This will create the following data structure in the shelve module:

'customname': {
    'root': '/home/sowrensen/test/project-a',
    'instances': []
}

Without the --name flag, it will be,

'project-a': {
    'root': '/home/sowrensen/test/project-a',
    'instances': []
}

Later in the instances list, you will add your project instances using dirs add command.

Set or change active project

To set or change active project, you must have at least one project. After adding projects, run:

lc proj active project-a

Remove a project

To remove a project from LordCommander, run:

lc proj clear project-a

The program will ask for your confirmation, if you allow it will remove entire project along with it's added instances. If a project is set as active during removal, the active key will set to null and you have to set an active project for further operations.

Rename a project

To rename a project, run:

lc proj rename oldname newname

If the project you renaming are the one currently marked as active, it will automatically update the name of the active project.

Directory/Instance Handling

See directory list

lc dirs view

This will show all saved directory names with the index as their insertion order. To sort directory names alphabetically, append sort or --sort after list.

lc dirs view [sort|--sort]

Adding directories

lc dirs add [dir1 dir2 dir3...]

All the directory names after add keyword will be appended to the directory list.

Removing directories

lc dirs clear [dir1 dir2 dir3...]

Add desired directory names after clear to remove them from list. However, you can also clear the entire list of directories if you specify --full after clear.

lc dirs clear --full

It will ask for your confirmation, if you allow, it will remove the entire list of directories.

Running Commands

Running a command throughout the saved directories is easy. Here's an example:

lc run pwd

That's it! It will recursively run for each saved directories and show the output. Afterwards, you will see the number of successful and failed runs.

Note: If your command is more than one word, you have to wrap it around with single or double quote. An example can be lc run 'git status'.

Throttled execution

Now, if you have a huge list of directories and you don't want to run the command altogether, you can slice them by indices (I assume that you're familiar with how array or list index works). If you run lc run --help you will see two flags --li and --ui respectively for lower index and upper index. So if you decide to run a command only to first 50 directories, you can simply specify --li=0 and --ui=50. Or even simpler, just mention --ui=50, it will run throughout index 0 to index 49 anyway.

lc run <command> --li=0 --ui=50

or,

lc run <command> 0 50

or,

lc run <command> --ui=50

So for running the rest? I bet you already figured that out,

lc run <command> --li=50

or,

lc run <command> 50

Yes, you don't have to remember or know how any items are in your list. Just tell the program to run it from 50 and it will start right there and won't stop until it reaches the end of the list.

Exclude directory/instance from execution

To exclude one or more particular directories/instances from execution, you can specify indices with --ex flag. e.g.:

lc run <command> --ex=3,8

Thus, directories in index 3 and 8 will be excluded from the list during execution.

Run only for specified directories

Like exclusion, you only can run a command for desired instances. Add --inc flag with indices for that, e.g.:

lc run <command> --inc=3,8

The command will run for index 3 and 8 only.

NOTE: The --ex and the --inc flag takes precedence over li and ui. That is to say, if you use --ex with li and ui, indices specified will be excluded. And in case of --inc, only for instances within the indices the command will run. Also, you should not use --ex and --inc together.

Utilities

From version 3.0, a utility class has been added to run some handy tasks. Right now there are four commands, more will be introduced over time.

Searching for a directory

Forgot if a directory name has already been included or not? Just tell the program to look for it, it will tell you if it is there or not.

lc utils search <directory_name>

Note: It is case sensitive, so if you have a directory named ABC and your search string is abc, you will get a negative result.

Seeing total number of directories

If you're wondering how many saved directories do you have, just tell LordCommander to count them for you:

lc utils total

Dumping and restoring data using JSON file

With version 4.0, you can dump and restore data of LordCommander. To dump existing data in the shelve module, run:

lc utils dump /home/sowrensen

The third argument is the location where you want to save the file. There you will find a file named lcdb_dump.json. You can use that file later to restore data into shelve module. To restore from a JSON file, run following command with the file path as third argument.

Note: Restoring data will replace existing data. It is a good idea to dump before you restore.

lc utils restore /home/sowrensen/lcdb_dump.json