Using fake file system repo for local course development

[drudv]

Would it make sense to add a course setting, which enables file system fake repo for the course? It could be, for example, a path to a course directory. I think it's useful for course development on a local instance of relate, so that author can work with uncommitted changes and commit them only after previewing it and making sure it works and looks ok on the local instance.

Some naive solution: get_course_repo function could return FileSystemFakeRepo object if the course directory is specified.

Perhaps it's already achievable somehow. If so, please point me out to a solution.

Thank you!

[inducer]

I sympathize with the goal (making content development more efficient), but I'm not that likely to invest resources in this myself... IMO what you propose would only benefit a small minority of folks who are willing and able to install the software on their own computers... I don't think that that's many people. I'm happy to review patches though, if you come up with something. As for making content creation more efficient, I think something along the lines of #70 would likely benefit more folks.

[drudv]

Thanks. I wanted to validate that this idea makes sense, because there could be known major pitfalls preventing this solution. I was considering it as rather some "quick win" trade-off, but I also agree that IDE-like solution could be a better alternative and more folks would benefit from it.

[inducer]

Sure, it should be pretty quick to hardwire in if you don't care about the solution being hacky. That could at least help validate it's possible. At least off the top of my head, I don't see any particular obstacles.