Working with Files

Tugger’s Starlark dialect exposes various types and functions for working with files. The most important primitives are:

FileContent

Represents an individual file - it’s filename, content, and an executable bit.

FileManifest

Represents a collection of files. This is a glorified mapping from an install path to FileContent.

glob()

Read files from the filesystem by performing a glob filename pattern search.

If a primitive in Tugger is tracking a logical collection of files (e.g. a WiXInstaller tracking files that an installer should materialize), chances are that it is using a FileManifest for doing so.

Copying Files

Say you want to collect and then materialize a collection of files. Here’s how you would do that in Starlark.

# Create a new empty file manifest.
m = FileManifest()

# Add individual files to the manifest.
m.add_file(FileContent(path = "file0.txt"))
m.add_file(FileContent(path = "file1.txt"))

# Then copy/materialize them somewhere.
m.install("output/directory")

If you wanted, you could even rename files as part of this:

m = FileManifest()

f = FileContent(path = "file0.txt")
f.filename = "renamed.txt"
m.add_file(f)

Or more concisely:

m = FileManifest()
m.add_file(f, path="renamed.txt")