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>
38 `vcsh` which <substring>
40 `vcsh` write-gitignore <repo>
42 `vcsh` <repo> <git command>
49 `vcsh` allows you to have several `git`(1) repositories, all maintaining their
50 working trees in $HOME without clobbering each other. That, in turn, means you
51 can have one repository per config set (zsh, vim, ssh, etc), picking and
52 choosing which configs you want to use on which machine.
54 `vcsh` is using a technique called fake bare Git repositories, keeping <$GIT_DIR>
55 in a different directory from <$GIT_WORK_TREE> which is pointed to <$HOME>.
57 The use of symlinks is not needed in this setup, making for a cleaner setup.
59 `vcsh` was designed with `mr`(1) in mind so you might want to install it alongside
60 vcsh. That being said, you can easily use `vcsh` without `mr` if you prefer.
62 A sample configuration for `vcsh` and `mr` can be found at
63 *https://github.com/RichiH/vcsh_mr_template* and used with `vcsh clone
64 https://github.com/RichiH/vcsh_mr_template mr`.
66 Please note that you can always use a path instead of a name for <repo>.
67 This is needed to support mr and other scripts properly and of no concern to
73 Source <file> prior to other configuration files
84 Clone an existing repository.
86 If you need to clone a bundle of repositories, look into the
87 `post-clone-retired` hook.
90 Delete an existing repository.
93 Enter repository; spawn new <$SHELL>.
99 Initialize an empty repository.
102 List all local vcsh repositories.
105 List all files tracked by vcsh.
108 List files tracked by a repository.
111 Pull from all vcsh remotes.
114 Push to all vcsh remotes.
120 Run command with <$GIT_DIR> and <$GIT_WORK_TREE> set. Allows you to run any
121 and all commands without any restrictions. Use with care.
123 Please note that there is a somewhat magic feature for run. Instead of <repo>
124 it accepts <path>, as well. Anything that has a slash in it will be assumed to
125 be a path. `vcsh run` will then operate on this directory instead of the one
126 normally generated from the repository's name.
127 This is needed to support mr and other scripts properly and of no concern to
131 Show statuses of all vcsh repositories.
134 Upgrade repository to currently recommended settings.
137 Print version information.
140 Find <substring> in name of any tracked file.
143 Write .gitignore.d/<repo> via `git ls-files`.
145 * <repo> <gitcommand>:
146 Shortcut to run `vcsh` on a repo. Will prepend `git` to <command>.
149 Shortcut to run `vcsh enter <repo>`.
153 As noted earlier, `vcsh` will set <$GIT_DIR> and <$GIT_WORK_TREE> to the
154 appropriate values for fake bare Git repositories.
158 There are several ways to turn the various knobs on `vcsh`. In order of
159 ascending precedence, they are:
161 * `VARIABLE=foo vcsh`
163 * <$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vcsh/config>
166 Please note that those files are sourced. Any and all commands will be
167 executed in the context of your shell.
169 Interesting knobs you can turn:
172 Can be <exact>, <none>, or <recursive>.
174 <exact> will seed the repo-specific ignore file with all file and directory
175 names which `git ls-files` returns.
177 <none> will not write any ignore file.
179 <recursive> will descend through all directories recursively additionally to
184 Less interesting knobs you could turn:
189 * <$XDG_CONFIG_HOME>:
190 As specified in the 'XDG Base Directory Specification', see
191 <http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html>
193 Defaults to <$HOME/.config>.
196 The directory where repositories are read from and stored.
198 Defaults to <$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vcsh/repo.d>.
201 The directory where hooks are read from.
203 Defaults to <$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vcsh/hooks-enabled>.
206 The directory where repositories are checked out to.
213 `vcsh` provides a hook system. Hook scripts must be executable and should be
214 placed in <$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vcsh/hooks-available>. From there, they can be
215 soft-linked into <$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vcsh/hooks-enabled>; `vcsh` will only
216 execute hooks that are in this directory.
218 Hooks follow a simple format. <pre-run> will be run before anything is run.
219 If you want to have more than one script for a certain hook, just append
220 any kind of string to order them. A system of <pre-run>, <pre-run.10>,
221 <pre-run.20> etc is suggested; other options would be <pre-run-10> or
222 <pre-run.sh>. A dot after the hook name is optional.
224 If you want to create hooks for a specific <vcsh> repository, simply prepend
225 the repository's name, followed by a dot, i.e. <zsh.pre-run>. Otherwise, the
226 same rules as above apply. The dot between the repository's name and the hook
227 is mandatory, though.
229 Available hooks are <pre-enter>, <post-enter>, <pre-run>, <post-run>,
230 <pre-upgrade>, and <post-upgrade>. If you need more, vcsh is trivial to patch,
231 but please let upstream know so we can ship them by default.
233 ## DETAILED HOWTO AND FURTHER READING
235 Manpages are often short and sometimes useless to glean best practices from.
236 While the author tried to avoid this in this case, manpages can not cover
239 This software also comes with a file called <README.md>. It contains various
240 approaches to setting up and using vcsh. You can view the file it as
241 plain text or render it into various other formats via Markdown.
243 On Debian-based systems, this file can be found in </usr/share/doc/vcsh>.
245 ## SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
247 `vcsh` allows you to execute arbitrary commands via `vcsh run`. For example,
248 adding a `sudo`(8) rule for `vcsh` would be pretty stupid.
250 Additionally, vcsh will source, i.e. execute, all files listed in <CONFIG>.
251 You can put any and all commands into these config files and they will be
256 None are known at this time, but reports and/or patches are more than welcome.
260 If you rely on `git submodule` use `git` 1.7.12 or later. Earlier versions
261 do not clean internal variables properly before descending into submodules,
262 resulting in unhappy end users.
266 Like most people, the author initially made do with a single repository for all
267 config files, all of which were soft-linked into <$HOME>.
269 Martin F. Krafft aka madduck came up with the concept of fake bare Git
272 vcsh was initally written by madduck. This version is a re-implementation from
273 scratch with a lot more features. madduck graciously agreed to let the author
278 This manpage and `vcsh` itself were written by Richard "RichiH" Hartmann.
282 Copyright 2011-2013 Richard Hartmann <richih.mailinglist@gmail.com>
284 Licensed under the GNU GPL version 2 or higher.
286 https://github.com/RichiH/vcsh