tzk/cli_docs/configuration.rst

===============
Configuring tzk
===============

Basic setup
===========

1. Change into a directory you'd like to use as your Zettelkasten repository.
   The directory should be empty, so you'll probably want to create a new one, e.g.:
   ::

       $ mkdir my_zettelkasten
       $ cd my_zettelkasten

2. Run ``tzk init``.
   This will create a tzk configuration file,
   install TiddlyWiki to this folder,
   and set up a Git repository.

3. When ``init`` has completed successfully,
   open the ``tzk_config.py`` in your favorite text editor.
   Read the comments and make any changes you would like.
   See the :ref:`Builders` section of this documentation
   for more information about builders --
   but you'll most likely want to get started with your wiki now
   and worry about builds once you actually have some content to build!

4. Run ``tzk listen`` and confirm that you can access your wiki.


Committing
==========

Many people find that carefully designing atomic Git commits
when editing a TiddlyWiki
is difficult and not all that useful,
so the ``tzk commit`` command is made available
to quickly stage, commit, and (if you wish) push all changes in the repository in one go.

If you want to push your changes to some remote location,
such as a GitHub repository,
add a new Git remote (e.g., ``git remote add origin https://github.com/you/YourRepository``)
and set the ``commit_remote`` option in your tzk config to the remote name
(here, ``origin``).
You can selectively skip pushing for a particular commit
with the ``--local`` switch to ``tzk commit``.

.. note::
   If you want to push a wiki that contains only some of your content
   to GitHub in a form that others can browse,
   don't try to set it up here --
   use a :func:`publish_wiki_to_github() <tzk.builders.publish_wiki_to_github>` builder
   at the end of the ``public`` build product.
   See :ref:`Builders` for more information.


Environment
===========

If you'd like to be able to run ``tzk`` from any directory,
rather than having to change into the directory of your tzk repository,
set the ``TZK_DIRECTORY`` environment variable on your system
to its full path.
If the current directory contains a ``tzk_config.py`` file,
the current directory will still be preferred to the ``TZK_DIRECTORY`` directory.

.. note::
    ``TZK_DIRECTORY`` is not honored when calling ``tzk init``.
    Otherwise tzk would prioritize the ``TZK_DIRECTORY`` over the current directory
    since the current directory doesn't contain a config file yet,
    and it would be impossible to initialize a second tzk repository.