Path Helpers

Functions for manipulating file paths. These are essential for building paths to sources, archives, and install destinations.

Overview

Path helpers let you build paths programmatically instead of string concatenation. Use join_path() to combine path segments safely.

join_path

Join two path segments. Handles trailing slashes correctly.

rust|

let src = join_path(BUILD_DIR, "foo-1.0");
// BUILD_DIR/foo-1.0

let binary = join_path(src, "target/release/myapp");
// BUILD_DIR/foo-1.0/target/release/myapp

let dest = join_path(PREFIX, "bin/myapp");
// /usr/local/bin/myapp

dirname

Get the parent directory of a path.

rust|

let parent = dirname("/home/user/foo/bar");
// "/home/user/foo"

// Useful for finding monorepo root from BUILD_DIR
let leviso_dir = dirname(BUILD_DIR);
let monorepo = dirname(leviso_dir);

basename

Get the final component of a path (filename or directory name).

rust|

let name = basename("/home/user/foo.tar.gz");
// "foo.tar.gz"

let dir = basename("/home/user/projects/myapp");
// "myapp"

Common Patterns

Path helpers are commonly used to:

rust|

// Build archive destination path
let archive = download(url, join_path(BUILD_DIR, ctx.name + ".tar.gz"));

// Build source directory path after extraction
ctx.source_dir = join_path(BUILD_DIR, ctx.name + "-" + ctx.version);

// Build install destination paths
let bin_dest = join_path(PREFIX, "bin/" + ctx.name);
let man_dest = join_path(PREFIX, "share/man/man1/" + ctx.name + ".1");

// Navigate relative to BUILD_DIR
let leviso_dir = dirname(BUILD_DIR);
let output_dir = join_path(leviso_dir, "output");
let staging = join_path(output_dir, "staging");