Re: org files and projects nested git repositories

[Kyle Meyer <kyle@kyleam.com>]

Hi Tyler,

Tyler Smith <tyler@plantarum.ca> writes:

> Hello list,
>
> I'm struggling to incorporate project-specific org files into my global
> org system. My file system looks something like this:
>
> ~
> ├── org
> │   ├── todo.org
> │   ├── reading.org
> │   └── personal.org
> └── research
>     ├── project1
>     │   ├── project1.org
>     │   └── project1_reference.pdf
>     └── project2
>         ├── project2.org
>         ├── data2
>         │   ├── data2A.csv
>         │   └── data2B.csv
>         └── project2_reference.pdf

[...]

> I wonder if it would be possible to maintain a global git repository
> containing my entire directory tree, but only the org files; and have
> all of these org files incorporated into (and new ones automatically
> detected by) the agenda. At the same time, I need to maintain individual
> git repositories for each project directory.
>
> Does anyone here have experience with such a system? Or other advice on
> how to keep many scattered org files in a single git repo and also
> captured in the org agenda?

In addition to what Ken suggested, another option is to use links to
populate the agenda directory.  Have a git repo for your Org notes and
agenda file (your "org" directory above), and add this directory (or one
of its subdirectories) to org-agenda-files so that all the Org files in
that directory are considered agenda files.

Keep project-related Org files in the given project directory (as you do
above), and create a symbolic link for the Org file in the agenda
directory.  The project directory will then track the content of the Org
file, and the agenda repo will just track the presence of the link.

Your example from above would look like this:

     ~
     ├── org
     │   ├── todo.org
     │   ├── reading.org
     │   ├── personal.org
     │   ├── link to ~/research/project1/project1.org
     │   └── link to ~/research/project2/project2.org
     └── research
         ├── project1
         │   ├── project1.org
         │   └── project1_reference.pdf
         └── project2
             ├── project2.org
             ├── data2
             │   ├── data2A.csv
             │   └── data2B.csv
             └── project2_reference.pdf

I use the command at the link below to add Org files to my agenda
directory.

  https://github.com/kyleam/emacs.d/blob/3eda2253d80322640be4ec0381194d4f387e6cc9/lisp/init-org.el#L437

Also, if the project Org file isn't something you want to always show up
in your global TODO list, you can just restrict the agenda to that file
(i.e., press "<") instead of adding it to the agenda directory.

--
Kyle