I have a huge project that I’m working on that involves a bunch of different folders and files nested in hierarchies of all sorts.
It would be great if I could pull the spotlight comments from folders (which usually describe a set of tags related to the functions defined in the code enclosed within them) into a master readme markdown file.
This read me would serve as a cross-platform index of all the comments so that anyone could benefit from the “documentation” provided by them.
The (git | hg) hook would need to maintain a segment of an otherwise manually editable “README.md” file and allow for some degree of customization as to the formatting of the content output.
It might also be interesting to peek into the files themselves and pull out some keyword information (like a class name definition or comment block.) This sort of functionality would be interesting but its value would have to be proven out in practice. The key proposition is to pull “Finder Comments” into the read me file in a way that is automatically maintained and doesn’t cause duplication after repeated processing.
It’s worth pointing out that using .DS_Store isn’t a viable option for tracking this data for two reasons: 1. The finder meta file doesn’t appear to warehouse comments at all and 2. Windows and linux have no idea what those files are for.