Notes - Generate trees from markdown with gtree

Checking out gtree. This caught my attention because it is for generating tree listings with markdown. Sometimes I want to have a tree in my notes.

It is not a replacement for the tree command. Rather, this is for generating trees from a markdown list.

Install

I am just grabbing the .deb and running it through gdebi. Releases here.

Usage

The simpilest way is to create a markdown file of a list and then use gtree to generate that list into a tree.

For this example I created tree.md. Its contents:

- Starting my tree
  - Point 1
  - Point 2
  - Point 3
    - Sub point 1
    - Sub point 2
    - Sub point 3

Now I can tell gtree to generate the contents of the file.

gtree output -f tree.md

It will then print in the terminal.

Starting my tree
├── Point 1
├── Point 2
└── Point 3
    ├── Sub point 1
    ├── Sub point 2
    └── Sub point 3

Creating directories

Using gtree you can also give it a markdown list and tell it to generate those directories. So, if you wanted:

- Parent
  - Child
  - Child
    - grandchild
    - grandchild

You can then pass that to gtree and it will literally create those directories, along with the sub-directories with the mkdir flag.

For this example, we name the file tree-dirs.md and then run:

gtree mkdir -f tree-dirs.md

https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/ddddddO/gtree#readme-mkdir-subcommand

Web

The most interesting part is that the dev has a web server and makes it easy to create a tree from markdown.

This is rad.

It is similar to tools for generating tables in markdown.

You can access it here without installing gtree:

https://ddddddo.github.io/gtree/

For example, I can create a markdown list like this:

• Data backups
  • 📂 nas
    • media
    • cloud files
    • projects
  • 📂 server
    • docker config data
    • compose files
    • volumes

And it will create this for me:

Data backups
├── 📂 nas
│   ├── media
│   ├── cloud files
│   └── projects
└── 📂 server
    ├── docker config data
    ├── compose files
    └── volumes

If gtree is installed, you can run this command and it will open your browser to the website for generating a tree.

gtree w

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