Re: symlink, scp:// and filepath slashes

Scott Henry Harrison wrote:

> >> :symlink $(WEBDIR)/welcome.html $(WEBDIR)/index.html  
> >> 
> > 
> > I don't see "scp://" or $PREFIX being used there.  Anyway, Aap cannot
> > make a symbolic link over scp://.  It is only supported for local files.
> > One exception is "rsync://", although the default setting is to copy the
> > file a link points to, not the link itself.  You can define $RSYNC to
> > change that.  But then it still only works for :copy, not for :symlink.
> 
> Will symlink-scp support ever be extended for remote files?
> (Would a patch be welcome?) 

If I look in my todo list, there are more important things to do.  But
if you can make a patch that is tested I would be tempted to included
it. :-)

> >> Also, filepath slashing seems a little unintelligent 
> >> 
> >> WEBDIR=usr/local/www/data
> >> :symlink $(WEBDIR)welcome.html $(WEBDIR)index.html  
> >> 
> >> :symlink "usr/local/www/datawelcome.html" "usr/local/www/dataindex.html" 
> >> failed: [Errno 2] No such file or directory 
> > 
> > You have to take care of slashes yourself in this situation.  Aap sees
> > only strings, it doesn't know that these are file names until the
> > arguments are used.  Compare that with a shell script.
> 
> Aap is intelligent with slashes in other situations.  Could intelligent
> handling of slashes be implemented (and would a patch be welcome)? 

This is supported in places where Aap concatenates parts of a file name.
But in this example Aap doesn't know that you are concatenating this
way.  It could also be that $WEBDIR is "my", to make "mywelcome.html".

> I respect your vision for why things are the way they are with A-A-P;
> I am just wondering what the future is, and if intelligent slash-handling
> and scp+symlink processing is extraneous in terms of the overall
> goals or keep-it-simple-notions you have for the software. 

I certainly hope to further improve Aap and make it easier to use.  But
the basic string handling and variable expansion can't be changed much
without causing confusion.

You can use a Python function for concatenation:

	`os.path.join(_no.WEBDIR, "welcome.html")`

It will insert a "/" or "\" or ":" as needed.  Although a "\" might
sometimes cause trouble, but that's an MS-Windows problem.

I could add an Aap function for this, but that won't make it
much easier and means another Aap-specific thing to learn.  Perhaps
using "join()" instead of "os.path.join()" could be used (also for a few
more often used functions, such as glob()).

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