Template function for relative path?

[2-4601]

Is there a template function that gives a relative path when given a base path and a target path as arguments?

I have something like this in mind:

$ chezmoi execute-template '{{ relativePath "/home/2-4601" "/home/2-4601/.local/share" }}'

.local/share

Golang's filepath seems to have a function like this: https://pkg.go.dev/path/filepath#Rel

[Lockszmith-GH]

how about just a replace string?

Sounds like an XYproblem, please explain what you are trying to achieve.

[Lockszmith-GH]

That's the nature of XYproblems, when you spell things out, aspects of the question either fall away or morph into the correct question 🧐

Anyway, per chezmoi docs, the templating is done by sprig, doesn't look like any of the Path functions have what you are asking for.

An option to simplify your files a bit might be to do all of the 'less nice' code once, during initialization and store them in .chezmoi.toml.tmpl

For example:

{{- $data_dir := osClean ( or (env "XDG_DATA_HOME") (env "USERPROFILE") ".local/share" | join "/" ) | trimPrefix ( osClean (list .chezmoi.homeDir ".:." | join "/" ) | trimSuffix ".:." ) }}

[data]
{{- if ($data_dir) }}
    data_dir = {{ $data_dir | quote }}
{{- end -}}
...

Then in your templates you can just use {{ .chezmoi.data.data_dir }}. It makes for a cleaner overall solution that spans across all your files.
After all, once the system has initialized there is no need to recalibrate.

Since you are running only once, you might be able to rely on external tools to resolve whatever you need, even if it a bit clunky or crude.

[2-4601]

Thanks. Saving the user data path to the config file as data is a nice idea. I think it would be best to save the absolute path in that case, because it is more usable everywhere else. The externals file is an exception because it wants relative paths. So there needs to be a special case that's best to handle in the externals file itself.

[Lockszmith-GH]

Makes total sense, and also - why not both 🤭?

[twpayne]

Note that you need to be careful on Windows, as Windows uses both \ and / as path separators (and a whole bunch of other path-related insanity with drive letter, shared drives, UNC paths, C:\PROGRA~1 vs. C:\Program Files, etc.) so using trimPrefix will need testing for your particular configuration if you're using Windows.

[Lockszmith-GH]

@twpayne the / vs \ is why my version wraps the path with osClean, this way I always get the correct local-os flavor.

And I totally agree about the quirks of short vs long path - always test.