A-Novel developer guide

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Work in parallel stacks ​

A stack is a full workspace. A second one lets you, or an agent, work on another task without touching your branches or running services.

Create a stack ​

A stack in the temporary directory is disposable: the system empties it in time. Pick a lasting STACK_DIR for a stack you keep.

bash
STACK_NAME=review
STACK_DIR="${TMPDIR:-/tmp}/a-novel-stacks/$STACK_NAME"
a-novel core stacks new "$STACK_NAME" --root="$STACK_DIR"
a-novel core sync --root="$STACK_DIR"

Register it with the daemon, keeping your default stack first:

bash
export A_NOVEL_STACKS="${A_NOVEL_STACKS:-default:$HOME/git-projects/a-novel},$STACK_NAME:$STACK_DIR"
a-novel core restart --preserve-targets

Add the export to your shell profile to keep the stack beyond this shell. Point commands at it with --stack:

bash
a-novel run start service-json-keys/rest --stack="$STACK_NAME"

List and remove stacks ​

bash
a-novel core stacks list
a-novel core stacks prune "$STACK_NAME" --dry-run
a-novel core stacks prune "$STACK_NAME"

prune frees the stack's files, containers and volumes. It refuses the default stack. It also refuses a stack whose checkouts hold uncommitted changes, a branch other than the default, or unpushed commits. --force prunes it anyway, and that work is lost. Drop its entry from A_NOVEL_STACKS afterwards.

Run one command in a throwaway stack ​

bash
a-novel --sandbox test -y

Put --sandbox first. It wraps any command except core, run and install, which drive the daemon.