Re: [PATCH] Allow tangling to a list of files

[Jacopo De Simoi]

Dear Tim, 

On Tuesday, July 6, 2021 3:30:40 AM EDT Tim Cross wrote:
> Jacopo De Simoi via "General discussions about Org-mode." <emacs-
orgmode@gnu.org> writes:
> > Hi Greg,
> > 
> > thanks for your comments!
> > 
> > On Tuesday, July 6, 2021 12:43:54 AM EDT Greg Minshall wrote:
> >> hi, Jacopo,
> >> 
> >> i'm not convinced this is needed over and above your old "solution" of
> >> using <<noweb>> witn N-different source blocks, each :tangle'ing to a
> >> different file.
> > 
> > To be honest I never quite managed to get it work... =)
> > 
> > My point here is to be able to have one org file tangle'ing to several,
> > slightly different outputs.  Ideally I want to use one readable literate
> > config for all my machines; the config can then be published (or
> > exported) to html
> > 
> > Say I want to create an org file to tangle .tmux.conf (or .zshrc) for
> > different machines; then most of the conf file would be the same (and
> > each such block would be tangled to all files) whereas some specifics
> > could be tangled to corresponding files only (e.g. ALIASes or EDITORs)
> > 
> > Even if a solution using noweb could work, I find being able to tangle to
> > a
> > list of files more readable and elegant. Especially when exporting the org
> > in an external format, I think the noweb solution would look like a hack,
> > whereas a solution with tangle-to-list would be much easier to parse.
> > 
> >> but, i'm curious -- in the example you sent, did you miss a ":tangle" on
> >> the "#+begin_src" line?
> > 
> > Yikes! of course I did! Good catch.
> > 
> >> > #+begin_src sh '("filename1" "filename2")
> >> > #my script
> >> > #+end_src
> 
> I'm not sure I fully understand the rationale behind this patch. It
> seems to be very niche oriented and not a terribly useful general
> feature. It feels like it is just a partial solution to a problem (i.e.
> generate multiple different files from the same org file). If this is
> the case, then you probably need some additional control structures to
> determine which bits/blocks go into which files. From what I can see,
> all the patch is doing is creating multiple files, which I imagine would
> then need to be modified anyway?
> 
> If I understand it correctly, all the files will end up with the same
> content. This seems odd to me. Am I missing something (like some ability
> to have different contents tangled to different files)?
> 
> If it is just generating multiple copies of the same file, I don't
> really see the value. It would be less processing/overhead to just
> create one file and then copy it (possibly copying it to different
> locations, such as a tramp filespec). Using the 'devops' style of org
> files, this could even be coded into a script block which could be
> executed after tangling.

In fact the files are different, since each source block is tangled to a 
possibly different subset of files. 

The logic for which files to tangle according to which parameter or tags can be 
implemented by some lisp magic such as 

#+begin_src sh :tangle (filenames-according-to-situation)
#+end_src

So my patch provides the framework to do this, but the implementation is left 
to the author.

I agree that if you tangle to shell or to any programming language, you can 
set up the checks for each usecase in the programming language itself.  

I developed this solution for plaintext config files (e.g. xkb maps, or KDE 
shortcut config files)  which are static and parsed as a single chunk.

I admit that the use case is quite specific, but it seemed to me a quite 
natural generalization of the current behavior, and worth adding.

Thanks for the discussion! It's really helpful to put things in perspective. 


> 
> Personally, I've used a different approach to a similar problem. For
> example, my .zshrc and init.el files have conditional tests which check
> either the hostname or platform type and set things accordingly. This
> way, I only ever have one .zshrc and one init.el file for all systems,
> but they behave differently based on the system they are running on.
> When the config does not support conditional tests, then I'll have
> different source blocks included in the tangle. Currently, I just turn
> off blocks I don't want (:tangle no), but I guess I could do something
> more sophisticated using noweb or tags, but the manual setting has
> worked fine so far as I don't have many files requiring this.
> 
> --
> Tim Cross

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