Support pathlib.Path objects for file paths

[Brekkjern]

This has become a fairly common pattern in my setup:

from decman import Module, File
from pathlib import Path

files = Path(__file__).parent / "files"

class MyModule(Module):
    def files(self) -> dict[str, File]:
        return {
            str(var.user_config / "systemd" / "user" / "some_service.service"): File(
                source_file=str(files / "some_service.service"),
                owner=var.username, permissions = 0o644)
        }

Having to convert both the key for the files dictionary and the source_file to a string is somewhat unergonomic. Being able to just pass pathlib.Path objects directly as keys or values for the decman.File constructors would be cut down on a bit of boilerplate, plus it would make the signature clearer on what the string is supposed to be for.

Using a bit new syntax here, but something like this?

type filepath = str | pathlib.Path

class Module:
    def files(self) -> dict[filepath, File]: ...

I'm wondering if you see any immediate issues with attempting this before I start delving into the code myself for this.

[kiviktnm]

I think this addition makes sense. And like you proposed strings should of course remain supported. For consistency this should be implemented everywhere where paths are involved.

I think adding a helper function which takes in a str | Path and returns a Path would make sense when using these paths.

[Brekkjern]

I know it's a tall ask, but if you rewrite the functions to work using paths, you can use this trick inside the function to make everything into a path:

def my_func(some_path: str | Path):
    some_path = Path(some_path)
    ...

Strings will be made into paths, and Path objects will just be passed straight through. Don't need a helper function for it.