Rodney Porter @ on
Ability to mark local file/directory to be ignored
I generate directories with soft links to files so local users can download all data files, pictures, or movies without having to find them buried in the trials. I would like to be able to mark these directories to be ignored by Pen, so that checksums and uploads, especially, do not happen with the soft links in these folders, but I can still choose to perform an action on an entire Experiment.
Another possible implementation would be to ignore soft links/aliases, though this isn't as general or as clean.
Ian Mathew @ on
Rodney,
I’ve thought about this issue, and I think I have a solution. I can implement a feature in PEN such that if a directory has a file with the name “.pen-ignore” directly beneath it, that directory will be ignored by PEN. Currently, this means that it will not show up at all in PEN, and that PEN will pretend it doesn’t exist. In the future, we could add some new color and file type for ignored folders, and display them in PEN, if requested. I’m still considering the User Interface aspect of this feature. Unless you reply to this with some objection, I will implement this feature as described in the next release of PEN.
Thanks,
Ian Mathew NEEScomm IT
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Rodney Porter @ on
The only issue that I see is if someone puts a .pen-ignore file in a directory that already exists in the repository. I would suggest that this be allowed and that the directory not be displayed (displayed in a new color when that is implemented). The other option would be to only show the repository files if the local directory is being ignored. Having a right-click option to ignore a directory (add the .pen-ignore file) would also be nice.
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Ian Mathew @ on
You make an excellent point concerning directories in the repository. I will have to investigate ways to manage those in conjunction with ignored directories. The right-click option to ignore also seems like a good UI solution, so I’ll add that to the implementation as well.
Thanks for your input on this issue.
Ian Mathew
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Ian Mathew @ on
Rodney,
I am currently working on this wish. At the moment, the proposed functionality will rely on the User Interface. If a user chooses to ignore a particular object (right click->ignore), that object will become closed in the tree view, and all operations on that object will be ignored. The only operation available on an “Ignored” object in PEN will be “Unignore”. This includes ignoring “Ignored” directories as part of a larger operation, which was the main point of your wish. This should be ready for Hub Release 3.5 in November, but may be out for testing sooner. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments concerning this plan.
Thanks,
Ian Mathew NEEScomm IT
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Ian Mathew @ on
This feature is now available for testing as described in the comments of this wish. Please go to nees.org/resources/pen and download PEN 1.4.0 and let us know if there are any problems with this implementation.
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