tss, a tool to manage files with filename tags

tss, a tool to manage files with filename tags

[Johan Grande]

Hi all. I thought I should present what I've been working on for the 
past weeks.

This is my first time developing anything half-serious in zsh. I'd love 
some thoughts on it or even a code review if anybody feels like it.

I took this project as an exercise and aimed to write as clean and 
robust code as I could, offer decent completion (though I admit I only 
understand the most simple features of the system), and have automated 
testing for the core features.

The code: https://github.com/nahoj/tss
git clone https://github.com/nahoj/tss.git

## What it does

tss is a tool to tag and find files with tags à la TagSpaces (a 
graphical tool), i.e., tags in file names such as "IMG-2653[vacation 
alps].jpg".

As you can guess, one can perfectly manage such files without any 
specialized tool, which was part of the appeal of this tagging system to 
me. But after a couple of years of tagging my files half in TagSpaces, 
half by hand, I thought a dedicated CLI tool would be handy after all.

$ ls
IMG-2653.jpg
$ tss add 'vacation alps' IMG-2653.jpg
$ tss files -t 'alps' *
IMG-2653[vacation alps].jpg
$ cp "IMG-2653[vacation alps].jpg" "IMG-2653_copy[vacation alps copy].jpg"
$ tss files -t 'alps' -T 'copy' *  # or --tags 'alps' --not-tags 'copy'
IMG-2653[vacation alps].jpg

### Glob patterns

$ tss remove 'v* a*' "IMG-2653_copy[vacation alps copy].jpg"
$ find | tss filter -t '(alps|pyrenees)'
./IMG-2653[vacation alps].jpg

### Completion

$ tss query -t tag1 <tab>           # Files with tag1
$ tss query -t tag1 path/ -t <tab>  # Tags found on files that have tag1 
in path/
$ tss add tag1 <tab>                # Files that don't have tag1

Best,

-- 
Johan

Re: tss, a tool to manage files with filename tags

[Thomas Lauer]

----original message----
From: Johan Grande <nahoj@crans.org>

> ## What it does
> 
> tss is a tool to tag and find files with tags à la TagSpaces (a 
> graphical tool), i.e., tags in file names such as "IMG-2653[vacation 
> alps].jpg".

I am also a great friend of having consistent and "easily findable"
files, esp for my music and the photos/videos of my travels etc so this
looks interesting.

So far, I'm using a superb replacement for the find command, called fd:
https://github.com/sharkdp/fd

This is a pretty well-thought out tool IMO and it's fast. (Another very
fast search tool that's become indispensable is ugrep:
https://github.com/Genivia/ugrep
but that's a different kettle of fish.)

fd, with a number of aliases and zsh functions I've defined, does a very
good job of locating (my variety of) tagged files; it'll be interesting
to compare this with your approach.

THX for sharing.

-- 
T

Re: tss, a tool to manage files with filename tags

[Johan Grande]

Thank you for your reply.

Le 29/07/2023 à 14:57, Thomas Lauer a écrit :
> I am also a great friend of having consistent and "easily findable"
> files, esp for my music and the photos/videos of my travels etc so this
> looks interesting.
> 
> So far, I'm using a superb replacement for the find command, called fd:
> https://github.com/sharkdp/fd

I didn't know fd, it looks nice, I might give it a try.

> fd, with a number of aliases and zsh functions I've defined, does a very
> good job of locating (my variety of) tagged files; it'll be interesting
> to compare this with your approach.

Are you also talking about tags in file names or audio/video/exif tags, 
or something else?

-- 
Johan

Re: tss, a tool to manage files with filename tags

[Thomas Lauer]

----original message----
From: Johan Grande <nahoj@crans.org>

> > fd, with a number of aliases and zsh functions I've defined, does a very
> > good job of locating (my variety of) tagged files; it'll be interesting
> > to compare this with your approach.
> 
> Are you also talking about tags in file names or audio/video/exif tags, 
> or something else?

Yeah, "tagged" filenames. I can find all pics done at a (or between)
certain dates/times, rough location, type (panorama, portrait...) etc.

-- 
T

Re: tss, a tool to manage files with filename tags

[Johan Grande]

Le 30/07/2023 à 19:34, Thomas Lauer a écrit :
> ----original message----
> From: Johan Grande <nahoj@crans.org>
> 
>>> fd, with a number of aliases and zsh functions I've defined, does a very
>>> good job of locating (my variety of) tagged files; it'll be interesting
>>> to compare this with your approach.
>>
>> Are you also talking about tags in file names or audio/video/exif tags,
>> or something else?
> 
> Yeah, "tagged" filenames. I can find all pics done at a (or between)
> certain dates/times, rough location, type (panorama, portrait...) etc.

OK, cool. I've been tagging files with dates myself. TagSpaces has a 
feature named smart tags to do this but I thought it would be overkill 
to add as a specific feature to tss; using queries such as `tss files -t 
'2012-07*'` or '<2012-2016>*' and sometimes $(date ...) does the job.

Well, if you find some use for tss now or in the future, feel free to 
drop me a mail, I'd love to hear.

-- 
Johan