bookpath

A small C# CLI for saving and jumping to frequently used directories.

The application is named bookpath. The intended shell alias is bp.

Requirements

• .NET 10 SDK or newer
• Spectre.Console.Cli 0.55.0

Spectre.Console.Cli 0.55.0 is the stable package used by this project.

Commands

Create a bookmark using the current directory:

bp

Create a bookmark with a name:

bp --name work
bp -n work

Create a bookmark with a specific path:

bp --name work --path "C:\src\my-project"

If --name is omitted, the application chooses the next numeric name (1, 2, 3, ...). The next number is based on the highest existing numeric name, so deleting 2 and creating another bookmark produces 4 rather than reusing 2.

If --path is omitted, the current working directory is stored.

List bookmarks:

bp list

Update only the name:

bp update work --name my-work

Update only the path:

bp update work --path "C:\src\other-project"

Update both:

bp update work --name my-work --path "C:\src\other-project"

Delete:

bp delete work

Lookup a bookmark path:

bp work

Persistence

Bookmarks are stored in:

%USERPROFILE%\.bookpath\bookmarks.json

On other platforms the equivalent user home directory is used:

~/.bookpath/bookmarks.json

The JSON contains the GUID, unique name, and unique path for every bookmark.

Important: changing the shell directory

A normal executable cannot change the working directory of the parent shell process. For that reason, bookpath prints only the resolved path when it is invoked as a direct bookmark lookup.

To make bp <bookmark_name> actually change the current directory, use the supplied shell function:

PowerShell

Put scripts/bp.ps1 in your PowerShell profile (or copy its function into the profile). Make sure bookpath.exe is available on PATH.

Bash / Zsh

Add the contents of scripts/bp.sh to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc. Make sure the bookpath executable is available on PATH.

Without the shell wrapper, this also works:

Set-Location -LiteralPath (bookpath work)

Build

dotnet restore
dotnet build -c Release

For a self-contained Windows executable:

dotnet publish src/BookPath/BookPath.csproj -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained true

Then place bookpath.exe on PATH and load the PowerShell bp function.

Design

The implementation is intentionally small:

• Domain/Bookmark.cs — bookmark entity.
• Application/BookmarkService.cs — uniqueness, normalization, CRUD and incremental naming rules.
• Application/IBookmarkRepository.cs — persistence abstraction.
• Infrastructure/JsonBookmarkRepository.cs — JSON file storage under the user's home directory.
• Commands/* — Spectre.Console.Cli command/settings classes.
• Program.cs — dependency wiring and command registration.

Names and paths are treated case-insensitively for uniqueness. Paths are normalized to full paths before they are stored.

The reserved command names are list, update, delete, and help, so those values cannot be used unambiguously with bp <bookmark_name> for direct navigation.