dir-snap - A snappy directory snapshot tool

This module makes it easy to compare before and after snapshots of your project's filesystem. Simply use dirsnap to create a reference point (dirsnap reference), then make as many changes as you want. When you want to see what has changed, run a compare (dirsnap compare) and the files that have been altered will be displayed.

Installation

Install globally via npm:

$ npm install -g dir-snap

Or globally via yarn:

$ yarn global add dir-snap

Usage

Please note that the command to use in the CLI is dirsnap with no hypen.

Reference

reference is a very simple function that creates a snapshot of the current folder structure. Pass in a folder to begin searching through and an extension for the filetype you care about (dirsnap reference -f ./myProject -e js).

$ dirsnap reference -f [folder] -e <ext>

When the scanning has completed, a reference JSON file will be written in the .dirsnap folder of the project to be used later during a compare. This library currently uses the MD5 checksum of a file for comparison purposes.

NOTE: The filename will be ${extension}FileReference.json.

An example of the JSON structure looks like this:

{
    "cwd": "/Users/FakeUser/Git/dir-snap/test/testParent",
    "date": "2017-09-03T03:06:23.079Z",
    "ext": "js",
    "files": {
        "/Users/FakeUser/Git/dir-snap/test/testParent": {
            "javascript.js": "496dd81dea39fb0b0c07be50c2fc67a3",
            "javascript.min.js": "1d6a42d2095f51127215e64c5f67da11"
        },
        "/Users/FakeUser/Git/dir-snap/test/testParent/models": {}
    },
    "folder": "./",
    "store": "./"
}

Compare

compare scans through the folder passed in and produces an updated snapshot to compare with the latest reference file. Once the compare happens, a colorized diff will be logged for all files that have changed since the reference was made.

$ dirsnap compare -f [folder] -e <ext>
$ dirsnap compare -f ./my-project -e js

List

list will output all reference files that are for a specific folder. This makes it easy to check what reference files have been created and can be compared against.

$ dirsnap list -f [folder]
// Example output:
// EXT DATE                     FILE
// js  2017-09-03T03:07:24.079Z jsFileReference.json
// css 2017-09-03T03:06:23.079Z cssFileReference.json

Reset

reset will delete one or all reference files for a specific folder. Use if you need to start over or have made significant changes to the folder structure.

$ dirsnap reset -f [folder] -e [ext]

NOTE: If a folder is not passed in, this command will delete all reference files tied to the current working directory.

Specifying a reference directory

Sometimes the folder being examined is not the best location for the .dirsnap directory (e.g. running a test that deletes and then recreates a folder). In these cases, the store option can be utilized for the compare and reference commands to indicate which folder to store the reference files in.

$ dirsnap reference -f [folder] -e [ext] -s [referenceFolder]
$ dirsnap reference -f ./my-project -e js -s ./references

License

Copyright Lance Turri. Released under the terms of the MIT license.