All patches and comments are welcome. Please squash your changes to logical
commits before using git-format-patch and git-send-email to
patches@git.madduck.net.
If you'd read over the Git project's submission guidelines and adhered to them,
I'd be especially grateful.
1 vcsh(1) - Version Control System for $HOME - multiple Git repositories in $HOME
2 ===============================================================================
6 `vcsh` [<options>] <command>
8 `vcsh` clone <url> [<repo>]
22 `vcsh` list-tracked-by <repo>
28 `vcsh` rename <repo> <newname>
30 `vcsh` run <repo> <shell command>
36 `vcsh` which <substring>
38 `vcsh` write-gitignore <repo>
40 `vcsh` <repo> <git command>
47 `vcsh` allows you to have several `git`(1) repositories, all maintaining their
48 working trees in $HOME without clobbering each other. That, in turn, means you
49 can have one repository per config set (zsh, vim, ssh, etc), picking and
50 choosing which configs you want to use on which machine.
52 `vcsh` is using a technique called fake bare Git repositories, keeping <$GIT_DIR>
53 in a different directory from <$GIT_WORK_TREE> which is pointed to <$HOME>.
55 The use of symlinks is not needed in this setup, making for a cleaner setup.
57 `vcsh` was designed with `mr`(1) in mind so you might want to install it alongside
58 vcsh. That being said, you can easily use `vcsh` without `mr` if you prefer.
60 A sample configuration for `vcsh` and `mr` can be found at
61 *https://github.com/RichiH/vcsh_mr_template* and used with `vcsh clone
62 https://github.com/RichiH/vcsh_mr_template mr`.
64 Please note that you can always use a path instead of a name for <repo>.
65 This is needed to support mr and other scripts properly and of no concern to
71 Source <file> prior to other configuration files
82 Clone an existing repository.
84 If you need to clone a bundle of repositories, look into the
85 `post-clone-retired` hook.
88 Delete an existing repository.
91 Enter repository; spawn new <$SHELL>.
97 Initialize an empty repository.
100 List all local vcsh repositories.
103 List all files tracked by vcsh.
106 List files tracked by a repository.
109 Pull from all vcsh remotes.
112 Push to all vcsh remotes.
118 Run command with <$GIT_DIR> and <$GIT_WORK_TREE> set. Allows you to run any
119 and all commands without any restrictions. Use with care.
121 Please note that there is a somewhat magic feature for run. Instead of <repo>
122 it accepts <path>, as well. Anything that has a slash in it will be assumed to
123 be a path. `vcsh run` will then operate on this directory instead of the one
124 normally generated from the repository's name.
125 This is needed to support mr and other scripts properly and of no concern to
129 Upgrade repository to currently recommended settings.
132 Print version information.
135 Find <substring> in name of any tracked file.
138 Write .gitignore.d/<repo> via `git ls-files`.
140 * <repo> <gitcommand>:
141 Shortcut to run `vcsh` on a repo. Will prepend `git` to <command>.
144 Shortcut to run `vcsh enter <repo>`.
148 As noted earlier, `vcsh` will set <$GIT_DIR> and <$GIT_WORK_TREE> to the
149 appropriate values for fake bare Git repositories.
153 There are several ways to turn the various knobs on `vcsh`. In order of
154 ascending precedence, they are:
156 * `VARIABLE=foo vcsh`
158 * <$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vcsh/config>
161 Please note that those files are sourced. Any and all commands will be
162 executed in the context of your shell.
164 Interesting knobs you can turn:
167 Can be either <exact> or <recursive>.
169 <exact> will seed the repo-specific <.gitignore> with all file and directory
170 names which `git ls-files` returns.
172 <recursive> will descend through all directories recursively additionally to
177 Less interesting knobs you could turn:
182 * <$XDG_CONFIG_HOME>:
183 As specified in the 'XDG Base Directory Specification', see
184 <http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html>
186 Defaults to <$HOME/.config>.
189 The directory where repositories are read from and stored.
191 Defaults to <$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vcsh/repo.d>.
194 The directory where hooks are read from.
196 Defaults to <$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vcsh/hooks-enabled>.
199 The directory where repositories are checked out to.
206 `vcsh` provides a hook system. Hook scripts must be executable and should be
207 placed in <$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vcsh/hooks-available>. From there, they can be
208 soft-linked into <$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vcsh/hooks-enabled>; `vcsh` will only
209 execute hooks that are in this directory.
211 Hooks follow a simple format. <pre-run> will be run before anything is run.
212 If you want to have more than one script for a certain hook, just append
213 any kind of string to order them. A system of <pre-run>, <pre-run.10>,
214 <pre-run.20> etc is suggested; other options would be <pre-run-10> or
215 <pre-run.sh>. A dot after the hook name is optional.
217 If you want to create hooks for a specific <vcsh> repository, simply prepend
218 the repository's name, followed by a dot, i.e. <zsh.pre-run>. Otherwise, the
219 same rules as above apply. The dot between the repository's name and the hook
220 is mandatory, though.
222 Available hooks are <pre-enter>, <post-enter>, <pre-run>, <post-run>,
223 <pre-upgrade>, and <post-upgrade>. If you need more, vcsh is trivial to patch,
224 but please let upstream know so we can ship them by default.
226 ## DETAILED HOWTO AND FURTHER READING
228 Manpages are often short and sometimes useless to glean best practices from.
229 While the author tried to avoid this in this case, manpages can not cover
232 This software also comes with a file called <README.md>. It contains various
233 approaches to setting up and using vcsh. You can view the file it as
234 plain text or render it into various other formats via Markdown.
236 On Debian-based systems, this file can be found in </usr/share/doc/vcsh>.
238 ## SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
240 `vcsh` allows you to execute arbitrary commands via `vcsh run`. For example,
241 adding a `sudo`(8) rule for `vcsh` would be pretty stupid.
243 Additionally, vcsh will source, i.e. execute, all files listed in <CONFIG>.
244 You can put any and all commands into these config files and they will be
249 None are known at this time, but reports and/or patches are more than welcome.
253 If you rely on `git submodule` use `git` 1.7.12 or later. Earlier versions
254 do not clean internal variables properly before descending into submodules,
255 resulting in unhappy end users.
259 Like most people, the author initially made do with a single repository for all
260 config files, all of which were soft-linked into <$HOME>.
262 Martin F. Krafft aka madduck came up with the concept of fake bare Git
265 vcsh was initally written by madduck. This version is a re-implementation from
266 scratch with a lot more features. madduck graciously agreed to let the author
271 This manpage and `vcsh` itself were written by Richard "RichiH" Hartmann.
275 Copyright 2011-2013 Richard Hartmann <richih.mailinglist@gmail.com>
277 Licensed under the GNU GPL version 2 or higher.
279 https://github.com/RichiH/vcsh