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) - manage config files in $HOME via fake bare git repositories
2 =====================================================================
6 `vcsh` [<options>] <command>
8 `vcsh` clone <url> [<repo>]
22 `vcsh` list-tracked-by <repo>
24 `vcsh` rename <repo> <newname>
26 `vcsh` run <repo> <shell command>
30 `vcsh` which <substring>
32 `vcsh` write-gitignore <repo>
34 `vcsh` <repo> <git command>
41 `vcsh` allows you to have several `git`(1) repositories, all maintaining their
42 working trees in $HOME without clobbering each other. That, in turn, means you
43 can have one repository per config set (zsh, vim, ssh, etc), picking and
44 choosing which configs you want to use on which machine.
46 `vcsh` is using a technique called fake bare git repositories, keeping <$GIT_DIR>
47 in a different directory from <$GIT_WORK_TREE> which is pointed to <$HOME>.
49 The use of symlinks is not needed in this setup, making for a cleaner setup.
51 `vcsh` was designed with `mr`(1) in mind so you might want to install it alongside
52 vcsh. That being said, you can easily use `vcsh` without `mr` if you prefer.
54 A sample configuration for `vcsh` and `mr` can be found at
55 *https://github.com/RichiH/vcsh_mr_template* and used with `vcsh clone
56 https://github.com/RichiH/vcsh_mr_template mr`.
58 Please note that you can always use a path instead of a name for <repo>.
59 This is needed to support mr and other scripts properly and of no concern to
65 Source <file> prior to other configuration files
76 Clone an existing repository.
79 Delete an existing repository.
82 Enter repository; spawn new <$SHELL>.
88 Initialize an empty repository.
91 List all local vcsh repositories.
94 List all files tracked by vcsh.
97 List files tracked by a repository.
103 Run command with <$GIT_DIR> and <$GIT_WORK_TREE> set. Allows you to run any
104 and all commands without any restrictions. Use with care.
106 Please note that there is a somewhat magic feature for run. Instead of <repo>
107 it accepts <path>, as well. Anything that has a slash in it will be assumed to
108 be a path. `vcsh run` will then operate on this directory instead of the one
109 normally generated from the repository's name.
110 This is needed to support mr and other scripts properly and of no concern to
114 Set up repository with recommended settings.
117 Find <substring> in name of any tracked file.
120 Write .gitignore.d/<repo> via git ls-files.
122 * <repo> <gitcommand>:
123 Shortcut to run `vcsh` on a repo. Will prepend `git` to <command>.
126 Shortcut to run `vcsh enter <repo>`.
130 As noted earlier, `vcsh` will set <$GIT_DIR> and <$GIT_WORK_TREE> to the
131 appropriate values for fake bare git repositories.
135 `vcsh` provides a hook system. Hook scripts must be executable and should be
136 placed in <$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vcsh/hooks-available>. From there, they can be
137 soft-linked into <$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vcsh/hooks-enabled>; `vcsh` will only
138 execute hooks that are in this directory.
140 Hooks follow a simple format. <pre-run> will be run before anything is run.
141 If you want to have more than one script for a certain hook, just append
142 any kind of string to order them. A system of <pre-run>, <pre-run.10>,
143 <pre-run.20> etc is suggested; other options would be <pre-run-10> or
144 <pre-run.sh>. A dot after the hook name is optional.
146 If you want to create hooks for a specific <vcsh> repository, simply prepend
147 the repository's name, followed by a dot, i.e. <zsh.pre-run>. Otherwise, the
148 same rules as above apply. The dot between the repository's name and the hook
149 is mandatory, though.
151 Available hooks are <pre-enter>, <post-enter>, <pre-run>, <post-run>,
152 <pre-setup>, and <post-setup>. If you need more, vcsh is trivial to patch,
153 but please let upstream know so we can ship them by default.
155 ## DETAILED HOWTO AND FURTHER READING
157 Man pages are intended to be short and thus often useless to glean best
158 practices from. This software comes with a file called <README.md>. It contains
159 various approaches to setting up and using vcsh. You can view the file it as
160 plain text or render it into various other formats via Markdown.
162 On Debian-based systems, this file can be found in </usr/share/doc/vcsh>.
164 ## SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
166 `vcsh` allows you to execute arbitrary commands via `vcsh` run. For example,
167 adding a `sudo`(8) rule for `vcsh` would be pretty stupid.
169 Additionally, vcsh will source, i.e. execute, <$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vcsh/config>.
170 You can put any and all commands into this config file and they will be executed.
174 None are known at this time, but reports and/or patches are more than welcome.
178 As of this writing (June 2012), `vcsh` does not work with `git submodule` due
179 to limitations within `git`. Depending on when you are reading this, you might
180 want to consider upgrading.
184 Like most people, the author initially made do with a single repository for all
185 config files, all of which were soft-linked into <$HOME>.
187 Martin F. Krafft aka madduck came up with the concept of fake bare git
190 vcsh was initally written by madduck. This version is a re-implementation from
191 scratch with a lot more features. madduck graciously agreed to let the author
196 This manpage and `vcsh` itself were written by Richard "RichiH" Hartmann.
200 Copyright 2011-2012 Richard Hartmann <richih.mailinglist@gmail.com>
202 Licensed under the GNU GPL version 2 or higher.
204 https://github.com/RichiH/vcsh