Don't kill your fingers by typing out long commands! Local aliases can help you achieve a whole new level of lazy!

NOTE: This demonstration uses the helper function, la, in place of the standard localalias command.

localalias is a light-weight shell wrapper that allows you to create per-directoy command aliases.

With bash/zsh, once an alias is set, it cannot be reused. If you want to define a new command using an alias, you have to choose a new alias name. This forces you to define many aliases, some of them with very obscure names that you will never remember. localalias solves this problem by providing an additional level of abstraction to your shell's default alias design scheme.

Local aliases allow you to abstract away from whatever project you are working on, by giving you the ability to setup generic aliases for what are, in actuality, very specific tasks. In my own setup, for example, I alias r to the command that launches the project I am working on. When in the top-level directory of the localalias project directory, running r is equivalent to python localalias. If I change directories, however, to work on a different project, running r will run a different command---one corresponding to the new project. I use multiple patterns like this to simplify my own workflow: t runs the tests, b builds the project, v opens up files in vim.¹

For more information, please refer to this project's official documentation.

There you will also find instructions for installation and tips for general usage.