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[[!meta title="(Un)entangling projects and repos"]]
[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2023 Alexey Bochkarev"]]
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# (Un)entangling projects and repos
Alexey Bochkarev (he/him) - <https://www.bochkarev.io>, @bochkarev@qoto.org (Mastodon)
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Emacs provides a few excellent tools for working on projects through
all their key stages. Orgmode is great for brainstorming, structuring
and maintaining TODO lists, tracking time, organizing notes, and
writing memos or reports. Many major modes help writing code, magit
makes version control almost frictionless, and projectile helps with
project management and navigation. However, I found a few situations
when I wanted to separate the concepts of "project" and "source
storage" (say, having a few version control repositories associated
with a single "generalized project").
In this talk, I would like:
1. to describe a specific example of such situation,
2. discuss a workflow aimed at managing such "generalized" projects
and present my solution, based on a very simple ELisp "glue" on top of
the functionality provided by package projectile.
For example, consider a research project (think: applied mathematics with
a heavy part of computational experiments). It might consist of:
- The ``paper'' draft: some sort of final report source, usually in
LaTeX format, or orgmode exported to PDF via LaTeX. Version controlled
by git.
- Numerical experiments: a separate folder, or even a separate git
repo. Contains the source code for numerical experiments and the
related technical documentation. Will be published along with the
paper.
- A collection of intermediate memos (notes) sent to collaborators.
- A collection of "raw" notes (lab journal), regarding what did I try
and especially what did NOT work and in which ways.
This setting raises a few problems that all boil down to the necessity
of having an easily accessible private notes file(s) associated with a
few repositories at the same time outside of these repos. This way one
can:
- Maintain more granular project structure and TODOs while still having
more concise TODO lists for the colleagues on a per-repository basis.
- Maintain (project-specific) private technical notes, and maybe a full
lab journal both describing the "big picture" of the project and
containing the technical information.
- Keep time tracking data private and outside of the source repositories,
- Capture thoughts and TODOs to a single place from across a few
specific repositories.
I propose to solve this problem by associating a single "notes folder"
and a main `.org` file to each repository using the standard mechanism
of directory-local variables on top of what is already provided by
projectile package.
# Discussion
## Questions and answers
- Q: Do you use these unentangling techniques in a blog or hosting a
zettelkasten?
- A: Well, I try to keep my "private notes" in something that
might qualify as a Zettelkasten, yes. I wouldn't say I 'host'
it --- it's not online. But yes, the whole point is that
these "private" notes are interconnected in a Zettelkasten-y
way (using org-roam package)
- Denote notes Silo features might be useful with your
workflow
- <https://protesilaos.com/emacs/denote#h:e43baf95-f201-4fec-8620-c0eb5eaa1c85>
- oh, thanks --- I'll have a look!
- Q: What is the biggest unhappiness you haven't figured out for your
current workflow?
- A: Maybe I am still on the fence re: where do I structure my
TODOs and clock time. I tried to play around with the idea that
I structure the work in a repo, and then when I "clock in" it
saves time to a separate notes file instead... but it seemed a
little too complicated, to my taste.
- I feel that the time tracking also kind of annoying,
especially you forgot to clock on and all the things mess
up. So right now I'm just using a Pomodoro technique, 25
minutes, done, rest, 25 minutes, rest, and kind of repeating
that. And I'm quite happy with that.
- wait, what's that? 'org-pomodoro'?. sounds
interesting...
- It's not, you know, special for Org Mode. It's
kind of a general technique which you focus on a
small task for just 25 minutes, but at the time
you're super focused, 100% focused, and after that
five minutes you rest, and you're kind of repeating
these patterns over long sections. You can do four,
five, six of those sections, and it helps me to
focus over relateive long time.
- I also feel this might be something really
useful. Just haven't found a way to incorporate
it into my workflow
- for me it's quite simple is I can just use
a simple stopwatch that every 25 minutes
stop and reminde me a rest. I believe
there's a lot of fancy clock specialized on
this this type of technique it's at the
core of this concept is really not a complex
idea.
- wait, I'm confused. So, that's outside
Emacs right? :-)
- Yes, the concept is outside of
Emacs, but I saw people using this
package. Let me search,:
<https://github.com/marcinkoziej/org-pomodoro>
<-- yeah, that one. Maybe I'll
have a look, thanks!
- Yeah, it's, again, if you're
familiar with the sports, it's
kind of making your long hard
working, breaking into a small
section, but I feel it's, you
have more kind of energy over a
long term, yeah.
- I like Using a weekly GTD log files for my TODO. That way I
can look back at them and not have my GTD to big. I like to
pull daily tasks from agenda
- and what do you do to transfer stuff between the weeks
--- a manual review?
- Q: Do you use project.el features as well, or just projectile.el
ones?
- A: Ugh. OK, I am at that point where I am not sure any more ;)
it is pretty well integrated to my Doom Emacs, so I am not sure
which one is that...
## Notes
- GNU Hyperbole already supports this with directory-specific quick
access button files (which can be Org files). These can connect to
any number and type of document artifacts, including projects,
repos, directories, etc. You don't need to put any code in
dir-locals either. The directory/project-specific tags jumping
(automatically selecting appropriate TAGS files) is also built-in.
Have a look.
- Yes, there's clearly a few ways to achieve this. I have a
feeling Hyperbole achieves this, and much more. I wanted to have
something simpler, somehow. (Yes, you seem to have some very
efficient techniques down; maybe you could utilize both).
Thanks for the talk, it was good. Thanks for the suggestion,
tho!
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