Transpose

A tool for moving and symlinking directories to a central location

Introduction

I've been using linux as my main machine for a while and wanted a central directory to backup as backing up my entire HOME directory was a mess. I found moving directories and symlinking worked great. I created a simple project when learning python (I called symlinker) and used it for a while but found it annoying to configure and work with.

I recently found I could use a tool like this for a SteamDeck and decided to start from scratch with better code and easier to use.

This is the current result, although it still needs a lot of work as I'm sure I'm not doing things particularly well.

Installation

Can be installed via pip. For instance, from within a virtualenv:

python -m venv .venv
. .venv/bin/activate
pip install .

Configuration

There are a few environment variables that can be defined to override defaults

TRANSPOSE_STORE_PATH="$XDG_DATA_HOME/transpose"
TRANSPOSE_CACHE_FILENAME=".transpose.json"

Usage

Storing a Directory

Storing a directory will:

1. Move a target to $STORE_PATH/{name}
2. Symlink target to $STORE_PATH/{name}
3. Create a cache file at $STORE_PATH/{name}/.transpose.json to store the original target path

transpose store "My Documents" /home/user/Documents

The above will (assuming using all the defaults):

1. Move /home/user/Documents to $XDG_DATA_HOME/transpose/My Documents
2. Symlink /home/user/Documents to $XDG_DATA_HOME/transpose/My Documents

Restoring a Store Directory

Restoring a directory will:

1. Remove the old symlink in the original_path of the cache file, $STORE_PATH/{name}/.transpose.json
2. Move the stored directory to the original_path

transpose restore "/home/user/.local/share/transpose/My Documents"

The above will (assuming all the defaults):

1. Remove the symlink at /home/user/Documents (from cache file)
2. Move $XDG_DATA_HOME/transpose/My Documents to /home/user/Documents

Applying a Previously Transpose Managed Directory

This will recreate the symlink based on the cache file within the directory.

This is most useful when moving the stored directory.

transpose apple "/home/user/.local/share/transpose/My Documents"