[Feature Request] An option to disable change directory for all recipes in justfile

[piotrekkr]

Hello. just is a great tool and I really like it. However this automatic change directory behavior and using [no-cd] in all my recipes is a bit annoying (but still acceptable). Would you consider adding some setting to disable this behaviour? Something like set no-cd and new attribute [do-cd] or something like this?

My use case.

All projects I'm working on are in ~/Projects.

~/Projects/my-project-1
~/Projects/my-project-2
...

I want to reuse one justfile located in ~/Projects/justfile. All those projects contain terraform configuration that I'm working on. When I want to change infrastructure of some project I will:

1. Go into ~/Projects/my-project-2
2. Make changes in infra config
3. Run validate, fmt, plan
4. If all is okay then apply infrastructure

There are some other common actions I do on all projects also but this is not important.

To work with terraform I need to be inside the directory that contains configuration. To make it work with just each recipe needs to have this [no-cd] added.

My working justfile looks like similar to this:

set quiet := true

[private]
[positional-arguments]
run-tf *args='':
    # this is actually more complicated command using docker with volumes and whatnot
    # but for this example I simplified it
    terraform "$@"

[no-cd]
init:
    just run-tf init

[no-cd]
upgrade:
    just run-tf init -upgrade

[no-cd]
validate:
    just run-tf validate

[no-cd]
plan:
    just run-tf plan

[no-cd]
apply:
    just run-tf apply

[no-cd]
destroy:
    just run-tf destroy

[no-cd]
cli:
    just run-tf bash

[no-cd]
format:
    just run-tf fmt -recursive .

[no-cd]
output *args='':
    just run-tf output "$@"

alias console := cli

All is working fine but would be great if I could just use something like set no-cd and remove all those [no-cd] lines. If I wanted to change dir to jsutfile dir I could then add [do-cd] in recipe and it would work the standard way.

Would you consider adding setting like this?

Thanks

[casey]

I think set no-cd would be reasonable. The working directory logic has been recently refactored into a single function, ExecutionContext::working_directory, which has access to settings, so it should actually be a pretty simple PR.

[artm]

I have started tackling this. I think it can be combined with #2082, to avoid multiplying attributes beyond necessity:

• set no-cd makes that by default working directory isn't modified
• [cd(DIR)] sets alternative working directory for a recipe with or without global no-cd setting
• [cd] undoes global set no-cd for a marked recipe (instead of the suggested [do-cd]
• setting [cd] and [no-cd] on the same recipe should cause an error on startup saying they are incompatible.

[casey]

@artm That all seems reasonable to me!

[rnhurt]

I just started using just and I'm really loving it. However, I'm running into the same problem as the OP. I have a bunch of AWS CloudFormation commands that are dependent on the directory they execute in.

Currently, my configuration works but is littered with [no-cd] attributes. This change would clean up my "justfile" considerably.

[waynr]

Adding my two cents here. I have a global justfile that I expect to be able to call from anywhere on my filesystem, eg cd /home/myhome/myprojects/myproject-git-root/subdirectory && just -g my-global-justfile-target

My expectation when doing this is that the working directory for the just process would be /home/myhome/myprojects/myproject-git-root/subdirectory. But for some reason it ends up being /home/myhome/myprojects/myproject-git-root, unless I rename the .git directory in myproject-git-root.

Why would anyone expect the behavior here to be implicitly using the git root as the working directory for the just targets? Should I file this as a separate bug issue?