Ubuntu Manpage: flashbake - automated snapshots with git

name
synopsis
description
options
configuration
example
usage
bugs
see also
author

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)