todo

todo.txt-cli replacement with a focus on portability

Some introductory remarks that can be safely skipped

Why?

I happily used todo.txt-cli until 2019 when I started using OpenBSD. With OpenBSD by default using ksh(1) instead of bash(1) the script didn't work anymore - which of course isn't a big surprise.

But even after installing bash(1) it still didn't work. Looking back I have no idea why that was the case but at that time it looked like todo.txt-cli was not just bash(1) specific but even specific to specific bash(1) versions/ports.

When I looked at the code I was shocked even more at some of the design decisions (I don't think I would judge it so harshly nowadays but I did then) and therefore decided to write my own replacement with a focus on portability.

Why and how purely POSIX?

By now this is also kind of a proof of principle to see if I can implement everything I want in a purely POSIX way. Hence I made some decisions that might themselves seem weird/shocking, e.g.:

• The -i flag is an extension to sed(1) and therefore not allowed. ed(1) to the rescue! ;)
• The -j in MacOS and -d in GNU date(1) one might want to use for date comparisons are extensions, so expr(1) is needed.

This also means: If it doesn't work for your obscure (but POSIX compliant) system, please tell me about it and I'll get it working.

Differences to todo.txt-cli

• Not all features are available, only those I care about.
• Some additional features exist because I care about them.
• The features both scripts share may be behind different flags and commands. I just didn't care about keeping the same syntax. Sometimes a different command also made more sense, e.g. since I wanted to (in most cases) be able to use single-letter-commands as abbreviations for the full commands I changed add to create in order for add and append not to conflict. For more details see the documentation.
• In the official todo.txt format rules the creation date is an option, in todo(1) it's always added. This is also the case for the completion date as well as the priority.
• Furthermore the order of priority and completion date in done.txt is reversed, e.g. an entry might be x 2023-06-21 (C) 2023-06-20 Do this thing @context +project due:2023-06-21.

Installation

make

will move todo to ~/bin/ and the manpage to ~/man/man1/. You may need to update your MANPATH.

Removal

make uninstall

Documentation

RTFM

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please review these guidelines beforehand.

• Shell code should be strictly following the POSIX standard without relying on syntax or commands of other shells. That's kinda the point of this project.
• Send a coherent commit history, making sure each individual commit is meaningful.
• You may need to rebase to avoid merge conflicts.
• If you are changing the behavior, you may need to update the manpage. You may want to check the mdoc(7) manpage for the syntax.
• Tools meant for inclusion in contrib/ may be written in any language following whatever coding style you prefer. But you might want to include a comment about the purpose of your tool, especially if the code is complex and difficult to understand at a glance.

Licence

ISC