A bash script to watch a file or folder and commit changes to a git repo
That's really up to you, but here are some examples:
- config files: some programs auto-write their config files, without waiting for you to click an 'Apply' button; or even if there is such a button, most programs offer you no way of going back to an earlier version of your settings. If you commit your config file(s) to a git repo, you can track changes and go back to older versions. This script makes it convenient, to have all changes recorded automatically.
- document files: if you use an editor that does not have built-in git support (or maybe if you don't like the git support it has), you can use gitwatch to automatically commit your files when you save them, or combine it with the editor's auto-save feature to fully automatically and regularly track your changes
- more stuff! If you have any other uses, or can think of ones, please let us know, and we can add them to this list!
gitwatch can be installed in various ways.
gitwatch can be installed from source by simply cloning the repository and
putting the shell script into your $PATH. The commands below will do that
for you if /usr/local/bin is in your $PATH. You may need to invoke
install with sudo.
git clone https://github.com/gitwatch/gitwatch.git
cd gitwatch
[sudo] install -b gitwatch.sh /usr/local/bin/gitwatchIf you installed gitwatch from source, you can update it by following the
exact same steps (or git pull rather than clone if you kept the repository
around).
gitwatch can be installed with bpkg. Make
sure you have bpkg installed before running
the command below. You may need to invoke bpkg with sudo when using the
-g flag.
[sudo] bpkg install -g gitwatch/gitwatchThere is an AUR package for Archlinux. Install it with you favorite aur helper.
If you add gitwatch to your flake, and append field gitwatch.modules to
your nixosSystem modules, then you can enable services.gitwatch.*:
services.gitwatch.<service name> = {
enable = true;
path = "/home/me/my-repo";
remote = "[email protected]:me/my-repo.git";
user = "me";
};This will make NixOS to create systemd service named gitwatch-<service name>.
Note that the service does not start before reboot, or alternatively if it is
started manually: systemctl start gitwatch-<service name>.
You can to play around with nix package inside this repository. Call nix run
in this repository to run gitwatch script or nix shell to enter shell with
gitwatch command available.
To run this script, you must have installed and globally available:
git(git/git | git-scm)inotifywait(part of inotify-tools)
If running on OS X, you'll need to install the following Homebrew tools:
brew install fswatch
brew install coreutilsWhen you start the script, it prepares some variables and checks if the file or directory given as input really exists.
Then it goes into the main loop (which will run forever, until the script is forcefully stopped/killed), which will:
- watch for changes to the file/directory using
inotifywait(inotifywaitwill block until something happens) - wait 2 seconds
- case file:
cdinto the directory containing the file (becausegitlikes to operate locally)git add <file>git commit -m "Scripted auto-commit on change (<date>)"
- case directory:
cdinto the directory (becausegitlikes to operate locally)git add --all .git commit -m "Scripted auto-commit on change (<date>)"
- if a remote is defined (with
-r) do a push after the commit (a specific branch can be selected with-b)
Notes:
- the waiting period of 2 sec is added to allow for several changes to be written out completely before committing; depending on how fast the script is executed, this might otherwise cause race conditions when watching a folder
- currently, folders are always watched recursively
gitwatch.sh [-r <remote> [-b <branch>]] <file or directory to watch>
It is expected that the watched file/directory are already in a git repository
(the script will not create a repository). If a folder is being watched, this
will be watched fully recursively; this also means that all files and
sub-folders added and removed from the directory will always be added and
removed in the next commit. The .git folder will be excluded from the
inotifywait call so changes to it will not cause unnecessary triggering of
the script.
If you have any large files in your repository that are changing frequently,
you might wish to ignore them with a .gitignore file.
If you want to have the script auto-started upon boot, the method to do this depends on your operating system and distribution. If you have a GUI dialog to set up startup launches, you might want to use that, so you can more easily find and change the startup script calls later on.
Please also note that if either of the paths involved (script or target) contains spaces or special characters, you need to escape them accordingly; if you don't know how to do that, the internet will help you, or feel free to ask here or contact me directly.
A central place to put startup scripts on Linux is generally /etc/rc.local
(to my knowledge; only tested and confirmed on Ubuntu). This file, if it has
the +x bit, will be executed upon startup, by the root user account. If
you want to start gitwatch from rc.local, the recommended way to call it
is:
su -c "/absolute/path/to/script/gitwatch.sh /absolute/path/to/watched/file/or/folder" -l <username> &
The <username> bit should be replaced with your username or that of any
other (non-root) user account; it only needs write-access to the git
repository of the file/folder you want to watch. The ampersand (&) at the
end sends the launched process into the background (this is important if you
have other calls in rc.local after the mentioned line, because the
gitwatch call does not usually return).
- If installed to a path other than
/usr/local/bin/gitwatch, modify[email protected]to suit - Create dir if it does not exist and copy systemd service file with
mkdir -p "$HOME/.config/systemd/user" && cp [email protected] $HOME/.config/systemd/user - Start and enable the service for a given path by running
systemctl --user --now enable gitwatch@$(systemd-escape "'-r url/to/repository' /path/to/folder").service
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