Ability to prompt when lack of existing .chezmoidata

[Roxedus]

I have usecases for both using the prompt functions, and preseeding chezmoi.EXT.

While the prompt works (when setting a default value outside of an if), it discards any existing chezmoi.EXT already present on the machine. This makes it impossible to use the same configuration on automated setups (ie placing chezmoi.EXT before running init) and manual setups where the prompts would answer all the needed questions needed for templating.

I understand this will break the current expected functionality.

>pwd
/config/.local/share/chezmoi
>yq '.data.name' ~/.config/chezmoi/chezmoi.yaml
Roxedus
>yq '.name' .chezmoidata.yaml
Roxedus
>cat .chezmoi.yaml.tmpl
{{- $personal = promptBool "Personal?" }}
data:
  email: {{ $personal | quote }}
  name: {{ $name }}

>chezmoi init roxedus --dry-run
chezmoi: template: chezmoi.yaml:4: undefined variable "$name"

I found #3225 and understand that an solution would be to add lots of logic to the template for tty and whatnot.

[halostatue]

This would be the prompt*Once init functions. Your .chezmoi.yaml.tmpl has issues and should be (I’m using left delimiter specification because it does not conflict with YAML formatters):

# chezmoi:template:left-delimiter="(:" right-delimiter=":)"
(:- $personal := promptBoolOnce . "email" "Personal?" -:)
(:- $name := promptStringOnce . "name" "Name" -:)
data:
  email: (: $personal | quote :)
  name: (: $name | quote :)

[Roxedus]

Thanks, the *once prompts does what i need. The docs isn't very clear on when it uses the existing data context, which is what threw me off that function altogether.

[halostatue]

The . is the existing data context.