usage.md

Usage

Create a new sparse repo

A focus-backed sparse repository is created from a dense repository. They're meant to be lightweight, so you can create multiple as necessary, e.g. one per feature.

Before trying to clone a repo, make sure that it's set up for focus (see Administration).

To create a new focus repository named smallrepo from your existing repo ~/monorepo, run

$ focus new --dense-repo ~/monorepo smallrepo

which will create the smallrepo repository in the current directory.

Add targets

There are two kinds of targets:

• Bazel targets, indicated by the scheme bazel:.
  • Adding a Bazel target to your repo will update the sparse checkout to include that target's files and all of its dependency packages.
  • Example: bazel:path/to/package:target.
  • You can also use /... to indicate "all subpackges of this package".
  • Example: bazel:path/to/package/....
• Directory targets, indicated by the scheme directory:.
  • Adding a directory target to your repo will force that directory to be included in the sparse checkout. This is useful for directories which aren't Bazel packages.

To check out a target, run focus add inside the sparse repo:

$ focus add bazel:path/to/package:target

This updates the sparse checkout with path/to/package:target and all of its dependencies.

Add projects

The members of your repository may have set up predefined projects to check out. A "project" is a named collection of Bazel and directory targets. If you know the name of the project you want to add, you can add it with focus add:

$ focus add my-project

Otherwise, you can browse and select projects with the interactive project selector:

$ focus add -i