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rrt tree

rrt tree

Section titled “rrt tree”

Render a project tree with gitignore-aware filtering.

Overview

Section titled “Overview”

rrt tree prints a repository or directory tree suitable for terminal review, docs snippets, and quick project orientation.

The command is read-only and intentionally deterministic:

  • stable ordering (directories first, then files)
  • optional depth limiting for large repositories
  • optional hidden-file inclusion
  • optional directories-only mode

Ignore behavior

Section titled “Ignore behavior”

When the selected root is inside a Git repository, ignore checks use Git’s own exclude engine via git check-ignore, so matching follows active repository rules and precedence semantics.

When the root is not in a Git worktree, the command falls back to a conservative local skip list for well-known transient directories (for example .git, node_modules, .venv) while still honoring explicit CLI flags.

Output formats

Section titled “Output formats”
  • classic (default): platform-aware tree connectors through GLYPHS.tree
  • ascii: forced ASCII connectors for paste-safe logs or legacy terminals
  • markdown: nested bullet output for Markdown docs and issue comments
  • rich: Rich tree rendering when the optional package is installed; falls back to classic with a warning when Rich is unavailable

Common options

Section titled “Common options”
  • --root PATH selects the traversal root
  • --max-depth N limits recursion depth (unlimited by default)
  • --dirs-only suppresses files
  • --show-hidden includes dotfiles and dot-directories

Failure behavior

Section titled “Failure behavior”

The command exits non-zero when:

  • the root path does not exist
  • the root path is not a directory

Unreadable subdirectories are reported as warnings and do not fail the command.

Examples

Section titled “Examples”
Terminal window
rrt tree
rrt tree --format ascii
rrt tree --format markdown --max-depth 3
rrt tree --root src/repo_release_tools --dirs-only
rrt tree --format markdown --inject README.md --anchor project-tree
rrt tree --format markdown --inject README.md --anchor project-tree --dry-run

Embedding a tree into a Markdown file

Section titled “Embedding a tree into a Markdown file”

Use --inject and --anchor to automatically update a block inside any Markdown document without touching the surrounding prose.

Step 1 — add anchor markers once (HTML comments, invisible when rendered):

## Project layout


Some intro text above — preserved on every run.


<!-- rrt:auto:start:project-tree -->
<!-- rrt:auto:end:project-tree -->


Some text below — also preserved.

Step 2 — run rrt tree with --inject:

Terminal window
rrt tree --format markdown --inject README.md --anchor project-tree

Only the content between the markers is replaced; everything else in the file stays untouched.

Anchor ID rules

Section titled “Anchor ID rules”

An anchor ID must start with an ASCII letter or digit followed by any combination of ASCII letters, digits, dots, underscores, or hyphens.

Valid examples: project-tree, src.layout, tree_v2

Caveats

Section titled “Caveats”
  • Symlinked directories are listed but not recursively traversed.
  • The root itself is not printed as a tree node; output begins with its children.
  • Rich formatting is optional and never required for baseline output.
Section titled “Related docs”

Badge families are intentionally complete for the current icon registry across platform, registry, and language labels; see src/repo_release_tools/tools/platform.py if you think one is missing.

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