Feature Request: Command Line Streamline

[EasyG0ing1]

I see in the readme how to use the open command to create a ram drive from the command line, but once the drive is created, TMPDisk remains running in the background.

Could we add a command line switch for closing the program once the drive is created?

Also, are all of the command line arguments documented anywhere? Or are the command line arguments in the readme the only ones available?

Also, it would be nice to be able to specify the size units on the command line like:

open -a /Applications/TmpDisk.app --args -name=TestDisk -size=64MB
open -a /Applications/TmpDisk.app --args -name=TestDisk -size=24GB

Or maybe

open -a /Applications/TmpDisk.app --args -name=TestDisk -size=64 -units=MB
open -a /Applications/TmpDisk.app --args -name=TestDisk -size=24 -units=GB

[imothee]

Hi @EasyG0ing1

I had only really added the cmd line prompt to make it easier to launch tmpdisk to manage the disks on startup (a feature request) but that was quickly superseded by the AutoCreate manager and run on login and pretty much just a legacy.

If your use case is just creating the TmpFS or Ram disks you can do it manually or create a simple bash shell around them instead of using tmpdisk since the extra features TmpDisk offers are only valid if TmpDisk is running.

sudo mount_tmpfs -s128M ~/.tmpfs/temp-128-mb-tmpfs

Or here's how to script up each of the variables for a plain ram disk

func createRamDiskTask(volume: TmpDiskVolume) -> String {
        let dSize = UInt64(volume.size) * 2048
        
        let filesystem: String = {
            switch (volume.caseSensitive, volume.journaled) {
            case (false, false):
                return "HFS+" // Mac OS Extended
            case (true, false):
                return "HFSX" // Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive)
            case (false, true):
                return "JHFS+" // Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
            case (true, true):
                return "JHFSX" // Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)
            }
        }()
        
        if volume.hidden {
            return "d=$(hdiutil attach -nomount ram://\(dSize)) && diskutil eraseDisk \(filesystem) %noformat% $d && newfs_hfs -v \"\(volume.name)\" \"$(echo $d | tr -d ' ')s1\" && hdiutil attach -nomount $d && hdiutil attach -nobrowse \"$(echo $d | tr -d ' ')s1\""
        } else {
            return "diskutil eraseVolume \(filesystem) \"\(volume.name)\" `hdiutil attach -nomount ram://\(dSize)`"
        }
    }

[imothee]

I'm going to overhaul this as part of 2.2.0 alongside the other bug with cli args.

[imothee]

Would love to get feedback on the new API and what's missing or unclear

TmpDisk Command Help
===================

Commands:
  help                    Display this help message

Parameters:
  name=VALUE              Set the disk name (default: TmpDisk)
  size=VALUE[MB|GB]       Set the disk size (default: 64MB)
  units=[MB|GB]           Set the size units (default: MB)
  fs=FILESYSTEM           Set the filesystem type (default: APFS)
                          Available: APFS, APFSX, HFS+, TMPFS, HFSX, JHFS+, JHFSX

Examples:
  tmpdisk name=MyDisk size=1GB
  tmpdisk size=512 fs=HFS+
  tmpdisk help

Note: Parameters can be prefixed with '-' (e.g., -name=MyDisk)

[EasyG0ing1]

@imothee

Hi, just wanted to give you some feedback on the CLI (which will be awesome once it's dialed in) ...

After installing the CLI into ~/.local/bin here is what happens when I try to engage it using various options:

First of all, every time I run the tmpdisk command, it launches a "system tray" icon at the top of my screen and the program never exits out of the bash command, meaning that it hangs the bash shell that I run it from. What would be ideal, would be if the bash command never launched the GUI portion of the program at all, and then it simply creates the ram volume then exits out - potentially with a return code (0 meaning all is well) this way, it could be called from other programs or scripts where one could then continue doing other things with the ram drive where the use of the command doesn't hang the shell.

Second, if the tray icon exists and I run tmpdisk from bash, it simply returns me to a prompt and does nothing. I have to first quit the program by clicking on the tray icon and choosing Quit before running the bash command. This could be a problem when trying to use the bash command from scripts or other programs.

In addition to that, here are the results of various usages of the command:

tmpdisk -name=RAMDisk -size=512 -fs=APFS

This creates the RAMDisk volume sized at 512 megabytes.

However:

tmpdisk -name=RAMDisk -size=8GB -fs=APFS
tmpdisk -name=RAMDisk -size=8 -units=GB -fs=APFS

Both of these do the same thing: they launch the GUI system tray icon and also hang the bash shell, but neither creates a RAM volume of any kind. In fact, I've not been able to get the CLI program to create a ram disk of any kind in the gigabyte range unless I don't specify the units and just use raw MB values ... for example:

tmpdisk -name=RAMDisk -size=8192 -fs=APFS

Gives me an 8 gigabyte RAM drive, but that's the only way I can make an 8 gigabyte RAM drive. And of course, the bash shell remains blocked, and the system tray icon is also running ... ideally, neither of those behaviors would happen.

Finally, when I run Check For Updates from the system tray icon, I get this:

I did these tests with version 2.2.1

[imothee]

Hi @EasyG0ing1 right now the cli is just a pathway into calling the main app logic. I didn't want to duplicate all the creation and management functionality into the standalone binary but I can definitely look to see if that's possible.

I fixed the update error, I'll take a look at why the cli is hanging on the other calls.