When i first found out about pushd and popd, i loved them, and used them all the time. These days, i never use them.
The way i work now is that i have a bunch of terminal tabs open. Each tab has a shell which pretty much just sits in a single directory. If i need to switch to a different directory, i switch tabs. A nice effect of this is that each tab builds up a recent shell history specific to the directory it sits in; the shell in the source directory has a history full of build commands, the shell in the installation directory has a history full of start and stop commands, and so on.
This works because i generally use a fairly small (<10) set of different directories, and i don't move between directories much as part of a single task. Partly, this is because i use qualified paths rather than cd'ing around everywhere. I am happy writing (mostly, tab-completing):
vi lib/awesomeapp/dns/client.rb
Whereas a colleague of mine would always do:
cd lib
cd awesomeapp
cd dns
vi client.rb
He might get a lot of mileage out of pushd/popd. But for me, it just optimises something i don't spend a lot of time doing.
I have the same workflow for switching between tabs, although on Mac the default keyboard shortcut for switching Terminal tabs (Cmd + Shift + '[' or ']') was a little too cumbersome. I swapped it out with (Cmd + '[') which by default will take you to the next Terminal, not tab. I move left to right more, so it made more sense for me.
Easy enough to change in system preferences, though. And with using Vim NERDtree, or some other directory plugin, it makes sitting at the top level directory of your project, with multiple projects in multiple tabs, pretty easy.
Are you on Mac? If so, have you done anything to make tab-switching easier/faster? I'm interested because I only recently set mine up this way, and am always open to more efficient methods.
The way i work now is that i have a bunch of terminal tabs open. Each tab has a shell which pretty much just sits in a single directory. If i need to switch to a different directory, i switch tabs. A nice effect of this is that each tab builds up a recent shell history specific to the directory it sits in; the shell in the source directory has a history full of build commands, the shell in the installation directory has a history full of start and stop commands, and so on.
This works because i generally use a fairly small (<10) set of different directories, and i don't move between directories much as part of a single task. Partly, this is because i use qualified paths rather than cd'ing around everywhere. I am happy writing (mostly, tab-completing):
Whereas a colleague of mine would always do: He might get a lot of mileage out of pushd/popd. But for me, it just optimises something i don't spend a lot of time doing.