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>
30 `vcsh` rename <repo> <newname>
32 `vcsh` run <repo> <shell command>
34 `vcsh` status [<repo>]
40 `vcsh` which <substring>
42 `vcsh` write-gitignore <repo>
44 `vcsh` <repo> <git command>
51 `vcsh` allows you to have several `git`(1) repositories, all maintaining their
52 working trees in $HOME without clobbering each other. That, in turn, means you
53 can have one repository per config set (zsh, vim, ssh, etc), picking and
54 choosing which configs you want to use on which machine.
56 `vcsh` is using a technique called fake bare Git repositories, keeping <$GIT_DIR>
57 in a different directory from <$GIT_WORK_TREE> which is pointed to <$HOME>.
59 The use of symlinks is not needed in this setup, making for a cleaner setup.
61 `vcsh` was designed with `mr`(1) in mind so you might want to install it alongside
62 vcsh. That being said, you can easily use `vcsh` without `mr` if you prefer.
64 A sample configuration for `vcsh` and `mr` can be found at
65 *https://github.com/RichiH/vcsh_mr_template* and used with `vcsh clone
66 https://github.com/RichiH/vcsh_mr_template mr`.
68 Please note that you can always use a path instead of a name for <repo>.
69 This is needed to support mr and other scripts properly and of no concern to
75 Source <file> prior to other configuration files
86 Clone an existing repository.
88 If you need to clone a bundle of repositories, look into the
89 `post-clone-retired` hook.
92 Commit in all repositories
95 Delete an existing repository.
98 Enter repository; spawn new <$SHELL>.
104 Initialize an empty repository.
107 List all local vcsh repositories.
110 List all files tracked by vcsh.
113 List files tracked by a repository.
116 List all files NOT tracked by vcsh.
118 By default, the file list is shallow and stops at directory levels where
119 possible. If you prefer to get a list of all files, append `-r` for
123 Pull from all vcsh remotes.
126 Push to all vcsh remotes.
132 Run command with <$GIT_DIR> and <$GIT_WORK_TREE> set. Allows you to run any
133 and all commands without any restrictions. Use with care.
135 Please note that there is a somewhat magic feature for run. Instead of <repo>
136 it accepts <path>, as well. Anything that has a slash in it will be assumed to
137 be a path. `vcsh run` will then operate on this directory instead of the one
138 normally generated from the repository's name.
139 This is needed to support mr and other scripts properly and of no concern to
143 Show statuses of all/one vcsh repositories.
146 Upgrade repository to currently recommended settings.
149 Print version information.
152 Find <substring> in name of any tracked file.
155 Write .gitignore.d/<repo> via `git ls-files`.
157 * <repo> <gitcommand>:
158 Shortcut to run `vcsh` on a repo. Will prepend `git` to <command>.
161 Shortcut to run `vcsh enter <repo>`.
165 As noted earlier, `vcsh` will set <$GIT_DIR> and <$GIT_WORK_TREE> to the
166 appropriate values for fake bare Git repositories.
170 There are several ways to turn the various knobs on `vcsh`. In order of
171 ascending precedence, they are:
173 * `VARIABLE=foo vcsh`
175 * <$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vcsh/config>
178 Please note that those files are sourced. Any and all commands will be
179 executed in the context of your shell.
181 Interesting knobs you can turn:
183 * <$VCSH_GITATTRIBUTES>:
184 Can be <none>, or any other value.
186 <none> will not maintain Git attributes in a special location.
188 If set to any other value, repo-specific gitattributes files will be maintained.
193 Can be <exact>, <none>, or <recursive>.
195 <exact> will seed the repo-specific ignore file with all file and directory
196 names which `git ls-files` returns.
198 <none> will not write any ignore file.
200 <recursive> will descend through all directories recursively additionally to
205 * <$VCSH_VCSH_WORKTREE>:
206 Can be <absolute>, or <relative>.
208 <absolute> will set an absolute path; defaulting to <$HOME>.
210 <relative> will set a path relative to <$GIT_DIR>.
212 Defaults to <absolute>.
214 Less interesting knobs you could turn:
219 * <$XDG_CONFIG_HOME>:
220 As specified in the 'XDG Base Directory Specification', see
221 <http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html>
223 Defaults to <$HOME/.config>.
226 The directory where repositories are read from and stored.
228 Defaults to <$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vcsh/repo.d>.
231 The directory where hooks are read from.
233 Defaults to <$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vcsh/hooks-enabled>.
236 The directory where repositories are checked out to.
243 `vcsh` provides a hook system. Hook scripts must be executable and should be
244 placed in <$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vcsh/hooks-available>. From there, they can be
245 soft-linked into <$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vcsh/hooks-enabled>; `vcsh` will only
246 execute hooks that are in this directory.
248 Hooks follow a simple format. <pre-run> will be run before anything is run.
249 If you want to have more than one script for a certain hook, just append
250 any kind of string to order them. A system of <pre-run>, <pre-run.10>,
251 <pre-run.20> etc is suggested; other options would be <pre-run-10> or
252 <pre-run.sh>. A dot after the hook name is optional.
254 If you want to create hooks for a specific <vcsh> repository, simply prepend
255 the repository's name, followed by a dot, i.e. <zsh.pre-run>. Otherwise, the
256 same rules as above apply. The dot between the repository's name and the hook
257 is mandatory, though.
259 Available hooks are <pre-clone>, <post-clone>, <post-clone-retired>,
260 <pre-command>, <post-command>, <pre-enter>, <post-enter>, <pre-init>,
261 <post-init>, <pre-pull>, <post-pull>, <pre-push>, <post-push>, <pre-run>,
262 <post-run>, <pre-upgrade>, and <post-upgrade>.
263 If you need more, vcsh is trivial to patch, but please let upstream know so
264 we can ship them by default.
266 ## DETAILED HOWTO AND FURTHER READING
268 Manpages are often short and sometimes useless to glean best practices from.
269 While the author tried to avoid this in this case, manpages can not cover
272 This software also comes with a file called <README.md>. It contains various
273 approaches to setting up and using vcsh. You can view the file it as
274 plain text or render it into various other formats via Markdown.
276 On Debian-based systems, this file can be found in </usr/share/doc/vcsh>.
278 ## SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
280 `vcsh` allows you to execute arbitrary commands via `vcsh run`. For example,
281 adding a `sudo`(8) rule for `vcsh` would be pretty stupid.
283 Additionally, vcsh will source, i.e. execute, all files listed in <CONFIG>.
284 You can put any and all commands into these config files and they will be
289 None are known at this time, but reports and/or patches are more than welcome.
293 If you rely on `git submodule` use `git` 1.7.12 or later. Earlier versions
294 do not clean internal variables properly before descending into submodules,
295 resulting in unhappy end users.
299 Like most people, the author initially made do with a single repository for all
300 config files, all of which were soft-linked into <$HOME>.
302 Martin F. Krafft aka madduck came up with the concept of fake bare Git
305 vcsh was initally written by madduck. This version is a re-implementation from
306 scratch with a lot more features. madduck graciously agreed to let the author
311 This manpage and `vcsh` itself were written by Richard "RichiH" Hartmann.
315 Copyright 2011-2013 Richard Hartmann <richih@debian.org>
317 Licensed under the GNU GPL version 2 or higher.
319 https://github.com/RichiH/vcsh