Proposal: persisting the autopostings to journal files would allow for review of changes made to rewriting rules about hledger-flow HOT 4 OPEN

Interesting use case - I haven't yet used auto postings. I'd like to add some to my personal journals so that I can run into the same issues you're describing.

The next week or two will be difficult though - but you're welcome to remind me about this if you haven't seen any activity in a few weeks.

from hledger-flow.

I don't use autopostings much yet, but seeing the effects of my changes in journals would allow me to experiment much more with them.

from hledger-flow.

This is not urgent

from hledger-flow.

I have the following (working) workaround

First, make it possible to override the hledger command in the scope of my root import directory

(in the root import directory)
$ cat .envrc 
PATH_add $(expand_path .)

Then, override the hledger command in such a way that hledger-flow picks it up

$ cat hledger
#!/usr/bin/env bash

MYDIR=$(readlink -e $(dirname "$0"))

set -euxo pipefail

case $@ in
    print\ *--file\ -*)
        cat "${MYDIR}/explicit-autopostings.journal" - | "${HOME}/.local/bin/hledger" "$@" --auto
    ;;
    --version|--help)
        "${HOME}/.local/bin/hledger" "$@"
    ;;
    print\ --forecast*)
        "${HOME}/.local/bin/hledger" "$@"
    ;;
    print\ --rules-file*)
        "${HOME}/.local/bin/hledger" "$@"
    ;;
    *)
        echo "unhandled: " "$@" 1>&2
        exit 1
    ;;
esac

A few notes:

• The rewrite rules are in the shared explicit-autopostings.journal file, which itself is not
  !include-d anywhere else
• Adding an extra -f explicit-autopostings.journal command line argument did not work.
  Instead, I add to pipe the autopostings to the hledger command in addition to the original input,
  hence the cat "${MYDIR}/explicit-autopostings.journal" -
• There is an additional --auto argument added to generate the automated postings.

As a result, my 3-journal target directories now contain the automated postings, and I can see the effect of my changes to rewrite rules in all their glory / infamy. I've got regressions on almost all the automated postings, so it was well worth adding.

from hledger-flow.