Ubuntu Manpage: flashbake - automated snapshots with git

NAME

       flashbake - automated snapshots with git

SYNOPSIS

       flashbake [options] <project_dir> [quiet_min]

DESCRIPTION

       flashbake  is a tool which watches files and automatically checks them in to a git repository. The commit
       lines can be customised. It is meant to be run from a cron job (see crontab(5) ). Thus it simplifies life
       for user by taking off the burden of manually committing changes and allowing one to focus on the work.

       quiet_min is a parameter to flashbake which tells it to only commit changes to files in the project  that
       have  not  been  changed  in  the last quiet_min minutes. Setting this to 0 or omitting this disables the
       quiet period and flashbake  immediately commits all changes when run.

       One of the nice features of flashbake is its generation of automatic commit  messages  using  its  plugin
       system.  flashbake's  plugins  can  pull in data from various sources including your microblogging feeds,
       uptime, weather etc.  and use that to generate the commit message.

       If you are new to flashbake, check out the CONFIGURATION and USAGE sections below for  more  information;
       you can also check the wiki (address given in SEE ALSO).

OPTIONS

       flashbake  follows the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options starting with two dashes (`-'). A
       summary of options is included below. For a complete description, see the online documentation.

       --version
              show version number and exit

       -h, --help
              show summary of options.

       -c, --context
              just generate and show the commit message, don't check for changes.

       -v, --verbose
              include debug information in the output, useful for reporting problems.

       -q, --quiet
              disable all output except errors

       -d, --dryrun
              do not change anything, just show what flashbake would do if executed without the -d  option  (dry
              run).

       -p PLUGIN_DIR, --plugins=PLUGIN_DIR
              specify an additional location for plugins

       -r, --purge
              purge any files that have been deleted from source control

CONFIGURATION

       flashbake is quite easy to setup and does not require knowledge of git internals. As flashbake requires a
       git  repository,  you  must  create  a git repository for the folder you wish to track by cd'ing into the
       folder and typing git init (if you have not done so already).

       flashbake configuration is done through a .flashbake file in the project directory.  Global  options  for
       flashbake can be specified in ~/.flashbake/config where ~ refers to the home directory (like /home/joe on
       Linux or /Users/joe on Mac OS X). If the ~/.flashbake/config file is present then it will get read first,
       followed by the project specific version.

       flashbake  tracks  changes  to only specific files which it terms as hot files. You have to specify these
       hot file names in the .flashbake file which should be created in the project directory.  Wildcards  which
       are  used  in the shell can be used, like ? for matching a single character, * for matching any number of
       characters and [] for ranges of characters ([0-9] would match a single digit from 0 to 9 in a filename).

EXAMPLE

       Here follows an example .flashbake file (taken from the wiki), with explanatory comments.

       # this enables the feed plugin
       plugins:flashbake.plugins.feed:Feed
       # these three lines are used by the feed plugin, see the Plugins page for
       # more info
       feed_url:http://www.mysite.com/feed
       # author is optional
       feed_author:Joe Random
       # limit is optional, defaults to 5 if unused
       feed_limit:3

       # this line is optional, omit it to disable email
       notice_to:joe@mysite.com
       # alternately, if you set up an ssh tunnel, you can set this and send
       # through
       # the tunnel
       #smtp_port:5002

       # hot files
       todo.txt
       my_novel.txt
       extra/character_notes.txt
       extra/story_bible.txt

       Any line beginning with # is a comment, of course. The notice_to: specifies an email address to mail when
       flashbake encounters some problems with a hot file. This functionality  is  not  mandatory  and  you  can
       comment notice_to: out to disable it.

USAGE

       This section shows some typical usage patterns of flashbake.

       If you run

       flashbake -c ~/my_novel

       flashbake  will  not  commit any changes, rather it will show you the commit message it would generate if
       run normally. This is useful for checking that you’ve entered the options in the control  file  correctly
       and checking the commit message content.

       Running

       flashbake -d ~/my_novel

       would make flashbake do a dry run, and it will do everything except actually updating the repository.

       One  of  the  most common ways to run flashbake is to run it under cron for example, putting this in your
       crontab(5)
       */15 * * * * flashbake ~/my_novel 5 > /dev/null
       would make flashbake run every fifteen minutes, checking in changes to the hot files  in  the  ~/my_novel
       directory which have not been changed in the last five minutes.

BUGS

       The  bug tracker is at http://github.com/commandline/flashbake/issues.  If you are experiencing problems,
       try out a newer version first, if available.

AUTHOR

       Written by Thomas Gideon.

       This manual page was written by Abhishek Dasgupta <abhidg@gmail.com>, for the Debian project (but may  be
       used by others).

                                                  June 30, 2010                                     FLASHBAKE(1)