git-pulsar 0.6.0

Automated, paranoid git backups for students and casual coding.

🔭 Git Pulsar (v0.6.0)

Automated, paranoid git backups for students and casual coding.

Git Pulsar is a background daemon that wakes up every 15 minutes, commits your work to a secluded wip/pulsar branch, and pushes it to your remote. It ensures that even if your laptop dies, your uncommitted work is safe on the server—without polluting your main history.

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⚡ Features

• Set & Forget: Runs silently in the background via launchd (macOS) or systemd (Linux).
• Non-Intrusive: Commits are pushed to a separate branch (wip/pulsar). Your main branch stays clean.
• Smart Checks:
  • Detects if the repo is busy (merging/rebasing) and yields.
  • Prevents accidental upload of large files (>100MB).
  • Auto-generates .gitignore for Python/LaTeX projects if missing.
• System Integration: Native desktop notifications on success or failure.

📦 Installation

macOS (Recommended)

Install via Homebrew to handle the daemon registration automatically.

brew tap jacksonfergusondev/tap
brew install git-pulsar
brew services start git-pulsar

Linux / Generic

Install via uv (or pipx) to isolate the environment, then register the systemd service.

uv tool install git-pulsar
git-pulsar install-service --interval 300  # Optional: Run every 5 mins (default: 900s)

🚀 Usage

1. Activate a Repository

Navigate to any project you want to back up and initialize Pulsar.

cd ~/University/Astro401
git-pulsar

This registers the path in the local registry (~/.git_pulsar_registry) and ensures the wip/pulsar branch exists.

2. Work Normally

You do not need to do anything else. Pulsar wakes up every 15 minutes to:

1. Check for changes.
2. Commit them to wip/pulsar.
3. Push to origin.

3. Manual Backup

If you want to force a backup immediately (e.g., right before closing your laptop), run:

git-pulsar now

4. Retrieve Your Work

When you are ready to finalize your work, you can squash the backup history into your main branch:

git checkout main
git merge --squash wip/pulsar
git commit -m "Finalized assignment submission"

⚙️ Configuration

You can customize global behavior by creating ~/.config/git-pulsar/config.toml.

Default Configuration:

[core]
backup_branch = "wip/pulsar"
remote_name = "origin"

[limits]
# 5MB log rotation
max_log_size = 5242880
# Skip files larger than 100MB
large_file_threshold = 104857600

🛑 Stopping the Service

To deregister the background daemon and stop all backups:

git-pulsar uninstall-service

🔧 Requirements

• Python 3.12+
• Headless Auth: Your git authentication must be non-interactive (SSH keys or a cached Credential Helper). Pulsar runs in the background and cannot prompt for passwords.

🛠️ Development

This project uses modern Python tooling.

1. Clone and Install Dependencies:

   git clone https://github.com/jacksonferguson/git-pulsar.git
   cd git-pulsar
   uv sync
   

2. Setup Pre-commit Hooks:

   pre-commit install
   

3. Run Tests: We use pytest for testing and hypothesis for property-based testing.

   uv run pytest
   

📂 Project Structure

.
├── LICENSE
├── pyproject.toml
├── README.md
├── uv.lock
├── src
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── cli.py         # Entry point & repo setup logic
│   ├── daemon.py      # Core backup loop & git operations
│   └── service.py     # Background service installer (launchd/systemd)
└── tests
    ├── test_cli.py
    ├── test_daemon.py
    └── test_properties.py

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.