6 ms·

Kanban Board for the Command Line

128 points by smartmic 4y ago

meain 4y ago
https://github.com/smallhadroncollider/taskell https://github.com/smallhadroncollider/taskell is a pretty good option for a similar usecse.
- kritr 4y ago
  I use taskell just for the vim keybindings :) Simple and renders to markdown lists.
jcbrand 4y ago
I went through a CLI phase were I tried to do everything there, including calendar, sideshows, email etc. The thing that makes Kanban useful is the collaboration in a team. I doubt a whole team would agree to use this tool though.
- petemir 4y ago
  Please, how did you get out of it?
  - jcbrand 4y ago
    (After work) I sometimes lie on the couch with my laptop on my stomach. Having to do everything via the keyboard and CLI (I even disabled my touchpad) became a hassle and over time I slowly started using the mouse and GUIs again.
- tlamponi 4y ago
  > I doubt a whole team would agree to use this tool though. Definitively, but it could work if was just one of the possible frontends and create another, for example, web based frontend. That naturally adds quite a bit of complexity as you either need a central server app that holds the source of truth or handle merging otherwise, be it by let the user take care (e.g., holding it as somewhat merge friendly text records in git) or do come up with some automatic conflict resolution. IMO that shows why developing and using such CLI tools is somewhat popular; it's really simple to do but often then only works for a single person or a team with a very similar mindset in the usage/tooling regard.
- rsolva 4y ago
  It is possible to use calDAV, cardDAV etc to sync tasks, contacts and calenders independent of the client you use. I have been doing this exercise the past few days with one guy who does everything in the CLI (mutt, todoman etc) while I have been using Thunderbird. It kinda works, but you have to forgo some features that are not supported by booth clients to make it work. It's rather basic feature set; no sub-task support for example. But I do not know of any other way to sync tasks and calenders across a team where preferences for different clients and tools vary.
  - zorr 4y ago
    This would be the ideal solution for collaboration. A shared *DAV server as a datastore where everyone can bring their own client. Unfortunately this breaks down rather quickly as the various calDAV and cardDAV implementations vary wildly for features outside of simple task lists. About a year ago I tried configuring sync between Linux/Windows/MacOS/Android and failed. I documented my search here [1]. 1. https://stevenvanbael.com/open-calendar-task-space-is-a-mess https://stevenvanbael.com/open-calendar-task-space-is-a-mess
    - pc86 4y ago
      This comment reminded me of this sentiment[0] I'd like to echo here. Central server of some open or semi-open standard where "everyone can bring their own client" is not realistic for most solutions, because most people just don't give a shit. It's great for nerds like us, but not so much... anyone else. [0] https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1572973761300774915 https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1572973761300774915
      - zorr 4y ago
        Unfortunately that tweet is pretty accurate for a lot of fields. Although there are examples that show it can be done. Look at email and Git for example, or HTTP, WebRTC and browser js/css in general. I think it is up to us OSS nerds to keep working towards a world that is more interoperable, preferring protocols over implementations. It is either that or giving up entirely and rolling over to the whims of Google, Meta and other big corps. In the two minutes it took me to write this comment Google has released two new chat apps, fragmenting my contact list even more /s.
rcarmo 4y ago
This is pretty amazing. I particularly like that it can live in a git repo as a sort of bolted-on project tracker. Anyone know of a similar thing for issue tracking?
- throwaway253547 4y ago
  https://github.com/dspinellis/git-issue https://github.com/dspinellis/git-issue
  - radarsat1 4y ago
    Something like this "git-issue" would be perfect if it were supported either built-in to git, or if a service like github/gitlab supported it through a web interface. Sadly, the latter will never happen, because it's in direct conflict with the added value proposed by those services. But, if it's not built-in to git, then you're going to have to convince everyone who might work on or contribute somehow to your project to buy in enough to your alternative system that they will be willing to install this extension, and also to ignore the github/gitlab issues interface. You can enforce it of course, but it's a difficult sell, similar to convincing people to use some alternative source control system just for your project. Too bad, because I really like the idea of tracking issues in the same repository. For one thing it would make commit comments like, "fixes issue #36" a lot more internally consistent. (Those kind of comments are what lose their value immediately if you move from e.g. github to another system, unless you find some way to port the issues too.)
    - bongobingo1 4y ago
      Yeah I really wish there was something built in for project tracking. I know it's kind of pretty huge scope push but it's something that basically every project needs- or could at least use- and having it siloed into other tooling is hard to sell. Even just Git-the-project defining a spec would go a long way, people could use their own local tools and eventually Github would have to implement the bridge or suffer the egg as other tools built better integrations. Of course it's all too fraught with landmines and will never happen, for better and for worse. Github could even end up making git-issues-msvc-edition and we'd get to relive the 90s. I wonder, are there proprietary VCS's that embed issues, etc?
aae42 4y ago
Wow, I've been wanting to build a cli or tui for Nextcloud deck but couldn't figure out the UI. This'll be good inspiration
somat 4y ago
Am I missing something? I just read the wikipedia page to figure out what kanban is(a back pressure notification mechanism for logistics) and two things jumped out at me. 1. Does software have logistics? Sort of, but it is nothing like most logistics, there is never a limited supply of things, and things are not consumed on use, anything you are waiting on is a one time r & d item. 2. Is there any need to have a back pressure system for a single user? Or has language shifted and kanban is now just the term for a specific variant of todo list?
- nisegami 4y ago
  >Or has language shifted and kanban is now just the term for a specific variant of todo list? Yes
- quadrifoliate 4y ago
  > Is there any need to have a back pressure system for a single user? I don't think the fundamentals of the system change because of a single user. Life is logistics. If I have a lot of stuff in the HOLD state, it might indicate that my life is super busy, and give me some areas where I should perhaps set up automation for those tasks, or see if I can make behavioral changes to avoid those. For example, there's a city trip plan in the author's screenshot. Assume there were 5 or 6 more. If you find yourself planning trips to a bunch of cities but never actually taking them (I have personally been in this situation a few times), then perhaps the Kanban board can reveal that bottleneck.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  Ignore all the jargon and analysis and just consider: is a todo list possibly more effective when divided up into states of completion/activity? I’ve been doing it this way for a good 15 years now (albeit just with a markdown/notepad file) and it’s been ridiculously effective. Especially in school.
- rgoulter 4y ago
  Some people use the word "agile" as a noun, supposedly taking inspiration from the "manifesto for agile software development". -- In this sense, 'kanban board' just means "todo list arranged in columns". A description of kanban (as applied to software development) that I did like was what it wanted to emphasise: 1. Maximize flow. - If work flows, there's more assurance that work will get done. 2. Minimize work in progress. Either a worker is working on something, or they're idle. Either a task is being worked on, or it's not making progress. 3. Visualise work in progress. - If many tasks aren't seeing progress, then visualising the work in progress is a way to show the bottlenecks in a process, which might restrict flow. (e.g. do reviews take too long, or are blocked on some key person; some key stakeholder needed for some review or some deployment, etc.). I think if no constraints are put on picking up work in progress, then a kanban board is just a todo list with columns.
subpixel 4y ago
I love this, but I don’t get to pick the tool where my issues live. So I’d need this to sync to Jira.
- rufus_foreman 4y ago
  That will be part of the Enterprise Edition.
alldayeveryday 4y ago
The developers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.
- sva_ 4y ago
  And it's written in bash.
  - ARandomerDude 4y ago
    Which honestly makes it impressive, especially given that the whole project is only 354 LOC.
    - giancarlostoro 4y ago
      That's impressive. Last time I needed to write more than 50 LOC in bash I wished I had been told it was alright if I used Python instead. bash is not hard or anything, but it can feel painful since it's different to everything else I'm used to.
    - lelanthran 4y ago
      > Which honestly makes it impressive, especially given that the whole project is only 354 LOC. You'd be shocked at how far you can go just by gluing together existing programs: https://github.com/lelanthran/terminal-todo https://github.com/lelanthran/terminal-todo
jasonpeacock 4y ago
For developers, there's no such thing as the ultimate todo-utility Actually, it's org-mode. But for the rest of us non-Emacs users, there's todo.txt: https://github.com/todotxt/todo.txt https://github.com/todotxt/todo.txt
sloum 4y ago
Or as an alternate approach: https://tildegit.org/sloum/swim https://tildegit.org/sloum/swim
AndrewVos 4y ago
Very cool. Unfortunately I'm going to have to plug my tool too. I've been using it for a while now and it has changed my life: https://github.com/AndrewVos/proj https://github.com/AndrewVos/proj
tpoacher 4y ago
I'm working on something similar (minus the kanban aspect) called 'bashtickets'. It started out as a simple ticket/milestone management system that was borne out of necessity for a project on which we only had ssh / no-X access and no root or ability to install most software. In the beginning it was a bunch of simple scripts, but it managed to carry us for 2 years with proper tickets and milestones. It worked great. I've been revamping it to a more modern command-based interface. Been using the old script-based system as 'dogfood' in the meantime, to manage the project's internal tickets, hah. It's not quite finished, but will post here once it's ready, since there's interest in such things. :) (happy to post the git.sr.ht link for a sneak "alpha" preview if anyone is curious enough though)

128 points by smartmic 4y ago

https://github.com/smallhadroncollider/taskell https://github.com/smallhadroncollider/taskell is a pretty good option for a similar usecse.

kritr 4y ago
I use taskell just for the vim keybindings :) Simple and renders to markdown lists.

jcbrand 4y ago

I went through a CLI phase were I tried to do everything there, including calendar, sideshows, email etc. The thing that makes Kanban useful is the collaboration in a team. I doubt a whole team would agree to use this tool though.

petemir 4y ago
Please, how did you get out of it?
- jcbrand 4y ago
  (After work) I sometimes lie on the couch with my laptop on my stomach. Having to do everything via the keyboard and CLI (I even disabled my touchpad) became a hassle and over time I slowly started using the mouse and GUIs again.
tlamponi 4y ago
> I doubt a whole team would agree to use this tool though. Definitively, but it could work if was just one of the possible frontends and create another, for example, web based frontend. That naturally adds quite a bit of complexity as you either need a central server app that holds the source of truth or handle merging otherwise, be it by let the user take care (e.g., holding it as somewhat merge friendly text records in git) or do come up with some automatic conflict resolution. IMO that shows why developing and using such CLI tools is somewhat popular; it's really simple to do but often then only works for a single person or a team with a very similar mindset in the usage/tooling regard.
rsolva 4y ago
It is possible to use calDAV, cardDAV etc to sync tasks, contacts and calenders independent of the client you use. I have been doing this exercise the past few days with one guy who does everything in the CLI (mutt, todoman etc) while I have been using Thunderbird. It kinda works, but you have to forgo some features that are not supported by booth clients to make it work. It's rather basic feature set; no sub-task support for example. But I do not know of any other way to sync tasks and calenders across a team where preferences for different clients and tools vary.
- zorr 4y ago
  This would be the ideal solution for collaboration. A shared *DAV server as a datastore where everyone can bring their own client. Unfortunately this breaks down rather quickly as the various calDAV and cardDAV implementations vary wildly for features outside of simple task lists. About a year ago I tried configuring sync between Linux/Windows/MacOS/Android and failed. I documented my search here [1]. 1. https://stevenvanbael.com/open-calendar-task-space-is-a-mess https://stevenvanbael.com/open-calendar-task-space-is-a-mess
  - pc86 4y ago
    This comment reminded me of this sentiment[0] I'd like to echo here. Central server of some open or semi-open standard where "everyone can bring their own client" is not realistic for most solutions, because most people just don't give a shit. It's great for nerds like us, but not so much... anyone else. [0] https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1572973761300774915 https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1572973761300774915
    - zorr 4y ago
      Unfortunately that tweet is pretty accurate for a lot of fields. Although there are examples that show it can be done. Look at email and Git for example, or HTTP, WebRTC and browser js/css in general. I think it is up to us OSS nerds to keep working towards a world that is more interoperable, preferring protocols over implementations. It is either that or giving up entirely and rolling over to the whims of Google, Meta and other big corps. In the two minutes it took me to write this comment Google has released two new chat apps, fragmenting my contact list even more /s.

rcarmo 4y ago

This is pretty amazing. I particularly like that it can live in a git repo as a sort of bolted-on project tracker. Anyone know of a similar thing for issue tracking?

throwaway253547 4y ago
https://github.com/dspinellis/git-issue https://github.com/dspinellis/git-issue
- radarsat1 4y ago
  Something like this "git-issue" would be perfect if it were supported either built-in to git, or if a service like github/gitlab supported it through a web interface. Sadly, the latter will never happen, because it's in direct conflict with the added value proposed by those services. But, if it's not built-in to git, then you're going to have to convince everyone who might work on or contribute somehow to your project to buy in enough to your alternative system that they will be willing to install this extension, and also to ignore the github/gitlab issues interface. You can enforce it of course, but it's a difficult sell, similar to convincing people to use some alternative source control system just for your project. Too bad, because I really like the idea of tracking issues in the same repository. For one thing it would make commit comments like, "fixes issue #36" a lot more internally consistent. (Those kind of comments are what lose their value immediately if you move from e.g. github to another system, unless you find some way to port the issues too.)
  - bongobingo1 4y ago
    Yeah I really wish there was something built in for project tracking. I know it's kind of pretty huge scope push but it's something that basically every project needs- or could at least use- and having it siloed into other tooling is hard to sell. Even just Git-the-project defining a spec would go a long way, people could use their own local tools and eventually Github would have to implement the bridge or suffer the egg as other tools built better integrations. Of course it's all too fraught with landmines and will never happen, for better and for worse. Github could even end up making git-issues-msvc-edition and we'd get to relive the 90s. I wonder, are there proprietary VCS's that embed issues, etc?

aae42 4y ago

Wow, I've been wanting to build a cli or tui for Nextcloud deck but couldn't figure out the UI. This'll be good inspiration

somat 4y ago

Am I missing something? I just read the wikipedia page to figure out what kanban is(a back pressure notification mechanism for logistics) and two things jumped out at me. 1. Does software have logistics? Sort of, but it is nothing like most logistics, there is never a limited supply of things, and things are not consumed on use, anything you are waiting on is a one time r & d item. 2. Is there any need to have a back pressure system for a single user? Or has language shifted and kanban is now just the term for a specific variant of todo list?

nisegami 4y ago
>Or has language shifted and kanban is now just the term for a specific variant of todo list? Yes
quadrifoliate 4y ago
> Is there any need to have a back pressure system for a single user? I don't think the fundamentals of the system change because of a single user. Life is logistics. If I have a lot of stuff in the HOLD state, it might indicate that my life is super busy, and give me some areas where I should perhaps set up automation for those tasks, or see if I can make behavioral changes to avoid those. For example, there's a city trip plan in the author's screenshot. Assume there were 5 or 6 more. If you find yourself planning trips to a bunch of cities but never actually taking them (I have personally been in this situation a few times), then perhaps the Kanban board can reveal that bottleneck.
Waterluvian 4y ago
Ignore all the jargon and analysis and just consider: is a todo list possibly more effective when divided up into states of completion/activity? I’ve been doing it this way for a good 15 years now (albeit just with a markdown/notepad file) and it’s been ridiculously effective. Especially in school.
rgoulter 4y ago
Some people use the word "agile" as a noun, supposedly taking inspiration from the "manifesto for agile software development". -- In this sense, 'kanban board' just means "todo list arranged in columns". A description of kanban (as applied to software development) that I did like was what it wanted to emphasise: 1. Maximize flow. - If work flows, there's more assurance that work will get done. 2. Minimize work in progress. Either a worker is working on something, or they're idle. Either a task is being worked on, or it's not making progress. 3. Visualise work in progress. - If many tasks aren't seeing progress, then visualising the work in progress is a way to show the bottlenecks in a process, which might restrict flow. (e.g. do reviews take too long, or are blocked on some key person; some key stakeholder needed for some review or some deployment, etc.). I think if no constraints are put on picking up work in progress, then a kanban board is just a todo list with columns.

subpixel 4y ago

I love this, but I don’t get to pick the tool where my issues live. So I’d need this to sync to Jira.

rufus_foreman 4y ago
That will be part of the Enterprise Edition.

alldayeveryday 4y ago

The developers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.

sva_ 4y ago
And it's written in bash.
- ARandomerDude 4y ago
  Which honestly makes it impressive, especially given that the whole project is only 354 LOC.
  - giancarlostoro 4y ago
    That's impressive. Last time I needed to write more than 50 LOC in bash I wished I had been told it was alright if I used Python instead. bash is not hard or anything, but it can feel painful since it's different to everything else I'm used to.
  - lelanthran 4y ago
    > Which honestly makes it impressive, especially given that the whole project is only 354 LOC. You'd be shocked at how far you can go just by gluing together existing programs: https://github.com/lelanthran/terminal-todo https://github.com/lelanthran/terminal-todo

jasonpeacock 4y ago

For developers, there's no such thing as the ultimate todo-utility Actually, it's org-mode. But for the rest of us non-Emacs users, there's todo.txt: https://github.com/todotxt/todo.txt https://github.com/todotxt/todo.txt

sloum 4y ago

Or as an alternate approach: https://tildegit.org/sloum/swim https://tildegit.org/sloum/swim

AndrewVos 4y ago

Very cool. Unfortunately I'm going to have to plug my tool too. I've been using it for a while now and it has changed my life: https://github.com/AndrewVos/proj https://github.com/AndrewVos/proj

tpoacher 4y ago

I'm working on something similar (minus the kanban aspect) called 'bashtickets'. It started out as a simple ticket/milestone management system that was borne out of necessity for a project on which we only had ssh / no-X access and no root or ability to install most software. In the beginning it was a bunch of simple scripts, but it managed to carry us for 2 years with proper tickets and milestones. It worked great. I've been revamping it to a more modern command-based interface. Been using the old script-based system as 'dogfood' in the meantime, to manage the project's internal tickets, hah. It's not quite finished, but will post here once it's ready, since there's interest in such things. :) (happy to post the git.sr.ht link for a sneak "alpha" preview if anyone is curious enough though)