Feature request: like "ds.publish" but for setting up your environment rather than a real run

[alaric-dotmesh]

https://dotscience.slack.com/archives/CKH8FSEGZ/p1568883556045300

THEM:

Just a quick question: If I create a project and have some data, scripts (shell scripts and similar files but not python) and no notebooks to just setup the project, will I be able to publish it in the platform ?

US:

What do you mean by "publish" in this case?

THEM:

Think of it as an "initial" commit in git (Barebones of the project)

US:

Ah, as in ds.publish()? Sure! If you make a notebook that just imports the ds library and does something like ds.publish("Initial setup") it'll snapshot that filesystem state in a run for you.

THEM:

Thanks. It would be nice to have something ( a button) to just publish in the platform without having to import the library if we are on the web platform ( a personal selfish feature 😄 )

I've heard before of people doing abunch of downloads in Jupyter then making a "run" that records them as outputs to make the metadata nice. Having a way to record work that's "setup" rather than a "run" might be nice, and could easily be done as a special kind of run.