👜 Tote

Tote is the nichest, weirdest piece of software I've ever written. It's an Odin program designed to modify Odin source code, specifically to manually pack or unpack constant strings into or out of #load compiler directives.

Note that tote is a quick and sketchy piece of software: it has not been extensively tested and you should check any files in before running tote on them.

Example

Given an Odin source.odin file like this —

// @tote shader.vert
SHADER_VERT :: #load("shader.vert", string)

// @tote shader.frag
SHADER_FRAG :: #load("shader.frag", string)

— running tote source.odin would directly import the contents of shader.vert and shader.frag into raw strings and delete the two files, overwriting source.odin with —

// @tote shader.vert
SHADER_VERT :: `#version 460 core

layout (location = 0) in vec4 vertex;

void main() {
	gl_Position = vertex;
}`

// @tote shader.frag
SHADER_FRAG :: `#version 460 core

out vec4 color;

void main() {
	color = vec4(1, 1, 1, 1);
}`

Running tote source.odin again will reverse the process and restore the shader files. The process is transparent to the Odin compiler, meaning the codebase will correctly compile in either state; this is purely a tool to aid code comprehension.

Usage

tote some_file.odin

Compilation

odin build tote.odin -file -o:speed

Requirements

It should be clear that these exact two-line layouts are required for tote to work, and you should probably not mix them in a single file¹.

// @tote filename.txt
CONSTANT HANDLE :: `raw string in backticks`

// @tote filename.txt
CONSTANT HANDLE :: #load("filename.txt", string)

Why?

I use the #load directive in Odin a lot. Almost all of the software I write in Odin bundles bundle at least some core resources with it. However, sometimes it makes more sense to embed strings directly in code instead, and sometimes it makes sense to do both at once.

I prefer to write shader code in a single file; complex shaders are easier to write and edit in the same file with all their shared namespaces. However, I prefer to check resources as important as shaders in as separate files for clarity in a 'codebase context' and #load them. Reading shaders is a lot easier when they're not embedded.

tote lets me have my cake and eat it.

Footnotes

1. Technically nothing bad will happen, it'll just invert which ones are files and which are strings, which seems silly. ↩