Feature suggestion: .cartaignore file

[lh-astro]

Some directories can sometimes be very crowded with files not intentioned to view in CARTA. It might be useful to defines two ignore settings/files in a similar way as the popular .gitignore file which can be used to hide files in the CARTA file browser:

1. A global ".cartaignore" file or setting within the CARTA interface and
2. a local .cartaignore file in the respective directory, which overwrites the global setting.

In addition the CARTA file browser could have a button or key shortcut the toggle between the ignore state.

[Jordatious]

Hey @lh-astro, this is an interesting idea, and I can see how this could be useful! Would you want to include image files that are readable by CARTA (FITS, CASA, etc) in your .cartaignore file(s)? If you didn't know, you can change how CARTA generates the file list in your global preferences (see attached), where "Filter by extension" will only list image files readable by CARTA based on their extension, which I think in the case of CASA (and miriad?) files is based on the directory contents. But including legitimate image files that you want to ignore sounds useful as well!

[veggiesaurus]

@confluence this looks similar to the issue we were discussing yesterday

[confluence]

This sounds like a good idea. Our use case can be solved with a per-directory file, but for this use case it would be more useful to define defaults in a single central location (a git-like model). I think it makes sense for a per-directory .cartaignore to override the global settings.

The question is:

1. where to put this global per-user file (the location should be immutable and accessible to the user both on SDM and UDM)
2. how easy it would be for us to resolve and match paths against patterns in a global file (rather than just per-directory) -- perhaps something like this package?

I considered the starting directory, but that should be able to have its own local .cartaignore which should not double as global config, and also the starting directory varies depending on how the backend is launched. Off the top of my head, the most consistent and appropriate place would be a .carta/cartaignore, but SDM users don't have access to local config like this. Is there a more sensible location for user preferences that would work for an SDM install?

[veggiesaurus]

but SDM users don't have access to local config like this. Is there a more sensible location for user preferences that would work for an SDM install?

My feeling is that SDM users would manage things using a per-directory cartaignore file. As an example, a user might create a .cartaignore file in a shared directory, masking out the logs directory and all .log files