"a last in, first out (LIFO) data structure" -- Wikipedia
Stack is a useful little shell script for maintaining a list of things you're working on. It stores its data files in Dropbox, so your stack will be in sync across multiple computers.
curl https://github.com/pcl/stack/raw/master/stack.rb > ~/bin/stack
chmod u+x ~/bin/stack
gem install uuid json --no-rdoc --no-ri
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Add some stuff to your stack $ stack push "fix that customer NPE" $ stack push finish up documentation $ stack push respond to Peter's email
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View your stack $ stack list 3. respond to Peter's email 2. finish up documentation 1. fix that customer NPE
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Move something up to the top of the stack $ stack touch 2 $ stack list 3. fix that customer NPE 2. respond to Peter's email 1. finish up documentation
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Remove something from the stack $ stack drop 1 $ stack list 2. fix that customer NPE 1. respond to Peter's email
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Remove the topmost item from the stack $ stack pop $ stack list 1. respond to Peter's email
Stack is a lightweight personal productivity tool. I try to keep my stack small, limited to just the items I'm working on actively. In other words, it's my "guilt backlog" -- the list of things that I'm juggling in my head all the time.
It is not a bugtracker, or a collaboration tool, or any of the many things that proper products like JIRA or Basecamp are great at. I have no plans to grow it into a full-fledged tool like those, although a certain level of integration could be nice.
- classify stack items for easy contextual filtering (work, home, etc.)
- attach data to stack items: $ git diff | stack attach 1 $ stack list 1. fix that customer NPE (attachments: a) $ stack cat 1a $ stack cat 1a | git apply
- load all my assigned tasks from JIRA into stack items: $ stack remote add jira http://my.jira.install/query $ stack pull jira This really depends on figuring out a lightweight way to classify items, since I don't want to see billions of issues in my stack -- I've already got JIRA for that!
- stack assumes that your Dropbox folder is at ~/Dropbox
If you have Dropbox installed (at ~/Dropbox or ~/My Dropbox), stack stores its data files in Dropbox, so your stack will be in sync across multiple computers. The stack data is stored in ~/Dropbox/.stack-data. If your Dropbox folder is somewhere else, you'll need to modify this script to use a different location, or add support for configuration via an environment variable or ~/.stack file or something.
The format is designed to work properly even if you add or remove items while your computer is offline, and move to a different computer before it gets a chance to sync up. Of course, you won't see your full set of changes until all the machines have a chance to communicate with Dropbox.