Context Design

Context Design

( This document is work in progress. At the moment it's mostly dumpster of thoughts. )

Context is anything that would affect execution of following commands. Think of it as a generalization of current directory and environment variables.

Context will be playing one of the central roles in the UI.

Requirements

• Context types
  • "File". At least participate in completion, probably by file type. Exact semantics TBD.
  • "Directory".
  • "Environment variables" (one or more environment variable set as a group)
  • AWS
    • "AWS profile"
    • "AWS tags"
      • In read type operations, the resources will be filtered by given tags
      • In write type operations, the resources will be tagged with given tags
    • "AWS lambda function name"
    • CloudFormation stack
    • List of AWS services in use (for the profile / account)
  • "git branch" (per directory context)
  • "String". TBD. Copy+paste buffer?
  • View settings
    • "Filters". Per type default filters.
    • "Columns". Per type columns to display.
    • "Sorting". Per type sorting.
  • "Aliases"
  • "Objects of Interest". Objects to watch and notify about changes automatically.
  • "Plugins". Per plugin enabled/disabled and settings.
• Automatically detect contexts. Examples: directory (cd blah), environment variables.
• Per-directory contexts (roughly .env functionality)
• Facility to create new contexts. Example: Creating context of type "AWS profile" will include modifying the configuration file.
• Resolved context, important for sharing. Examples:
  • AWS profile -> AWS account number
  • cd relative_dir -> absolute dir (not sure actually good for sharing)
• UI specific context such as theme?
• It should be possible to share context.
• TBD: combining contexts, possibly hierarchical

Open Issues

• Relation to bookmarks
• UI to mark any object on the screen as a context?