Developers Guide

This guide explains the architecture, key decisions, and trade-offs made during the development of goto.

---

Project Structure

Directory/File	Description
cmd/main.go	Entry point for the application.
cmd/pkg/search.go	Logic for directory searching using find and fzf.
cmd/pkg/config.go	Logic for dealing with user configurations.
setup.sh	Shell integration setup script.
test/	Unit tests.

---

Key Decisions

1. Why Go?

• Reason: Go provides a lightweight, fast, and cross-platform environment for CLI tools.
• Trade-offs: Limited third-party libraries compared to other languages, but we prioritize simplicity.

2. Why find and fzf?

• find is robust and handles directory traversal efficiently.
• fzf provides a fast, well-supported fuzzy search interface.

3. Configuration Format

• YAML was chosen for its readability and flexibility.
• Alternatives Considered: JSON (too verbose), INI (limited flexibility).

4. Shell Integration Approach

• Wrapper functions in .bashrc and .zshrc enable seamless navigation.
• Challenge: Go binaries cannot directly change the shell’s state, so outputting the path to a wrapper script was the solution.

---

Future Considerations

• Add bookmarks for frequently used directories.
• Directory aliases for common directions.
• Regex and advanced filtering.
• Enhanced fuzzy search customisation.
• Explore direct Fish shell support.
• Use of parallelisation and Goroutines.
• Config Validator.
• goto files:
  • Maybe open with preferred text editor?
  • Maybe jump to file directory?
  • Maybe both?

---

Back