Avoid having an explicit content folder

[rufuspollock]

The simplest digital garden or website looks like this:

my-project/
  index.md
  about.md

At the moment this works "out of the box" if you make my-project your "content" folder. Though flowershow is installed outside of my-project i.e. you end up with something like:

.flowershow/...
my-project/
  index.md
  about.md

Is this a problem? Not sure it is ... In what situations would it be?

• Yes (?) if later i want to customize my site as i'll want to get into the .flowershow stuff - though in this case you'd run "eject"

• Or imagine i have other stuff like i want to add components ... Then i end up with

   my-project/
     content/
     components/
  

  Is this an issue?

Discussion: why can't we install flowershow into the content folder?

why can't we just do:

my-project/
  index.md
  about.md
  .flowershow/templates/default
  .flowershow/templates/default => symlink ../../../

Because we get infinite loops with certain tools.

Solution:

• Force use of content folder
  • 👍 very clean, easy for the devs
  • 👎 annoying for users and may not work for them (not at all obvious why)
• Do not have content folder => symlink file by file
  • 👍 works ootb as expected
  • 👎 have to re-run symlinking all the time i.e. watch for new files, removed files and update (duplicating what contentlayer is already doing ...)
• Install flowershow template somewhere special / core and only install in a specific folder if specifically asked like vuepress with default theme flowershow eject https://vuepress.vuejs.org/theme/default-theme-config.html#ejecting

[rufuspollock]

My sense is this is part of a bigger refactoring of how Flowershow is installed and access content and includes things like not having to separate assets into an assets folder.

That is at the moment you have to have:

my-project
  index.md
  assets/my-image.png

 and i want:

my-project
index.md
my-image.png

Thinking about this - i suspect this is a bit of a different issue (??)

[rufuspollock]

Adding note that you definitely do get issues with infinite loops as per @olayway comment in #269

Not sure if we want to support it but:

It's not possible atm to install the template inside the content folder. This will result in the following esbuild error, even though we have .flowershow specified in contentlayer config's contentDirExclude.

ready - started server on 0.0.0.0:3000, url: http://localhost:3000
Error: Found 1 problems in 1 documents.

 └── Encountered unexpected errors while processing of 1 documents. This is possibly a bug in Contentlayer. Please open an issue.
     
     • "index.md": UnexpectedMDXError: Error: Build failed with 1 error:
     _mdx_bundler_entry_point-8f9ad85f-55d1-40f7-81d2-a6e3869c4584.mdx:0:0: error: [plugin: @mdx-js/esbuild] Error: ELOOP: too many symbolic links encountered, stat '/home/ola/Projects/lifeitself/my-site/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content/.flowershow/content'
         at Object.statSync (node:fs:1583:3)
         at walkDir (/home/ola/Projects/lifeitself/my-site/content/.flowershow/node_modules/remark-wiki-link-plus/dist/index.cjs.js:404:13)
         at /home/ola/Projects/lifeitself/my-site/content/.flowershow/node_modules/remark-wiki-link-plus/dist/index.cjs.js:385:16
         at Array.map (<anonymous>)
         at /home/ola/Projects/lifeitself/my-site/content/.flowershow/node_modules/remark-wiki-link-plus/dist/index.cjs.js:399:18
         at /home/ola/Projects/lifeitself/my-site/content/.flowershow/node_modules/remark-wiki-link-plus/dist/index.cjs.js:386:14
         at Array.reduce (<anonymous>)
         at /home/ola/Projects/lifeitself/my-site/content/.flowershow/node_modules/remark-wiki-link-plus/dist/index.cjs.js:385:16