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` clone <url> [<repo>]
20 `vcsh` list-tracked-by <repo>
22 `vcsh` rename <repo> <newname>
24 `vcsh` run <repo> <command>
28 `vcsh` which <substring>
30 `vcsh` write-gitignore <repo>
32 `vcsh` <repo> <gitcommand>
39 `vcsh` allows you to have several `git`(1) repositories, all maintaining their
40 working trees in $HOME without clobbering each other. That, in turn, means you
41 can have one repository per config set (zsh, vim, ssh, etc), picking and
42 choosing which configs you want to use on which machine.
44 `vcsh` is using a technique called fake bare git repositories, keeping <$GIT_DIR>
45 in a different directory from <$GIT_WORK_TREE> which is pointed to <$HOME>.
47 The use of symlinks is not needed in this setup, making for a cleaner setup.
49 `vcsh` was designed with `mr`(1) in mind so you might want to install it alongside
50 vcsh. That being said, you can easily use `vcsh` without `mr` if you prefer.
52 A sample configuration for `vcsh` and `mr` can be found at
53 *https://github.com/RichiH/vcsh_mr_template* and used with `vcsh clone
54 https://github.com/RichiH/vcsh_mr_template mr`.
56 Please note that you can always use a path instead of a name for <repo>.
57 This is needed to support mr and other scripts properly and of no concern to
63 Clone an existing repository.
66 Delete an existing repository.
69 Enter repository; spawn new <$SHELL>.
75 Initialize an empty repository.
78 List all local vcsh repositories.
81 List all files tracked by vcsh.
84 List files tracked by a repository.
90 Run command with <$GIT_DIR> and <$GIT_WORK_TREE> set. Allows you to run any
91 and all commands without any restrictions. Use with care.
93 Please note that there is a somewhat magic feature for run. Instead of <repo>
94 it accepts <path>, as well. Anything that has a slash in it will be assumed to
95 be a path. `vcsh run` will then operate on this directory instead of the one
96 normally generated from the repository's name.
97 This is needed to support mr and other scripts properly and of no concern to
101 Set up repository with recommended settings.
104 Find <substring> in name of any tracked file.
107 Write .gitignore.d/<repo> via git ls-files.
109 * <repo> <gitcommand>:
110 Shortcut to run `vcsh` on a repo. Will prepend `git` to <command>.
113 Shortcut to run `vcsh enter <repo>`.
117 As noted earlier, `vcsh` will set <$GIT_DIR> and <$GIT_WORK_TREE> to the
118 appropriate values for fake bare git repositories.
122 `vcsh` provides a hook system. Hook scripts must be executable and should be
123 placed in <$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vcsh/hooks-available>. From there, they can be
124 soft-linked into <$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vcsh/hooks-enabled>; `vcsh` will only
125 execute hooks that are in this directory.
127 Hooks follow a simple format. <pre-run> will be run before anything is run.
128 If you want to have more than one script for a certain hook, just append
129 any kind of string to order them. A system of <pre-run>, <pre-run.10>,
130 <pre-run.20> etc is suggested; other options would be <pre-run-10> or
131 <pre-run.sh>. A dot after the hook name is optional.
133 If you want to create hooks for a specific <vcsh> repository, simply prepend
134 the repository's name, followed by a dot, i.e. <zsh.pre-run>. Otherwise, the
135 same rules as above apply. The dot between the repository's name and the hook
136 is mandatory, though.
138 Available hooks are <pre-enter>, <post-enter>, <pre-run>, <post-run>,
139 <pre-setup>, and <post-setup>. If you need more, vcsh is trivial to patch,
140 but please let upstream know so we can ship them by default.
142 ## DETAILED HOWTO AND FURTHER READING
144 Man pages are intended to be short and thus often useless to glean best
145 practices from. This software comes with a file called <README.md>. It contains
146 various approaches to setting up and using vcsh. You can view the file it as
147 plain text or render it into various other formats via Markdown.
149 On Debian-based systems, this file can be found in </usr/share/doc/vcsh>.
151 ## SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
153 `vcsh` allows you to execute arbitrary commands via `vcsh` run. For example,
154 adding a `sudo`(8) rule for `vcsh` would be pretty stupid.
156 Additionally, vcsh will source, i.e. execute, <$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vcsh/config>.
157 You can put any and all commands into this config file and they will be executed.
161 None are known at this time, but reports and/or patches are more than welcome.
165 Like most people, the author initially made do with a single repository for all
166 config files, all of which were soft-linked into <$HOME>.
168 Martin F. Krafft aka madduck came up with the concept of fake bare git
171 vcsh was initally written by madduck. This version is a re-implementation from
172 scratch with a lot more features. madduck graciously agreed to let the author
177 This manpage and `vcsh` itself were written by Richard "RichiH" Hartmann.
181 Copyright 2011-2012 Richard Hartmann <richih.mailinglist@gmail.com>
183 Licensed under the GNU GPL version 2 or higher.
185 https://github.com/RichiH/vcsh