git-status-checker 2020.3.2

Check git repositories for uncommitted or unpushed changes.

git-status-checker

Yet another git status checker, in python. Because none of the bash-based ones were working on my Windows box with git-bash...

What it does:

This is just a script that (1) finds git repositories given a list of base directories, and (2) checks if any of the repositories have uncommitted changes or needs to be updated with origin, i.e. if it has changes that have not been pushed, or if origin has changes that have not been pulled.

Installation:

Installation is not strictly required, it is perfectly possible to use git-status-checker as a script, by running git_status_checker.py as a python script. The only requirement is that you have pyyaml installed (is used to save script configuration files). Just download the git_status_checker.py script (or clone the whole repository), and run the script using whatever Python interpreter you have (Python 3+ only, no legacy python), e.g.:

> python /path/to/git-status-checker/git_status_checker/git_status_checker.py

However, you can also install git-status-checker, so it more easily accessible, and you don't have to remember where you placed the script.

You can install git-status-checker with pip:

> pip install git-status-checker

By default, this will get you the most recent release from PyPI.

If you want to use the most recent developer version from GitHub, e.g. if you want to make changes to how git-status-checker works, you can download or clone the git-status-checker repository, and then add a -e flag when installing with pip to install in "editable" mode: pip install -e git-status-checker.

Recommended use, examples:

Basic usage:

Open your command prompt / terminal and navigate to where you keep your git repositories:

cd ~/Dev

Then simply run git_status_checker.py:

~/Dev>  python /path/to/git_status_checker.py

If you have installed git-status-checker, you can also just type:

~/Dev>  python -m git_status_checker

That's it. The git_status_checker.py script will look in all sub-folders, searching for git repositories, and for every repository it finds, it will check to see if it has outstanding changes to be committed, or commits that have not been pushed to origin, and display the results in the terminal.

• NOTE: Many of the examples below assumes git-status-checker is installed. If you are running git_status_checker.py as a script, rather than as an installed module, just replace python -m git_status_checker with python /path/to/git_status_checker.py.

The installation process will also install git-status-checker as a directly-executable program, so instead of typing python -m git_status_checker, you can also type:

~/Dev>  git-status-checker

Specifying directories to search for git repositories:

It is possible to tell git-status-checker where to search for git repositories, just add the base directories as arguments:

> python -m git_status_checker ~/Dev ~/Documents

The script will walk each of the given directories (~/Dev and ~/Documents) searching for git repositories, then print the status for all repositories with outstanding commits or that can be pushed or fetched to/from origin.

Using a file containing all the base-dirs

If you have a lot of git repositories scattered in multiple locations, you may want to create a file containing each location, and then just load that file with git_status_checker.py, instead of having to type all locations as arguments every time you run git-status-checker:

1. Produce a list of places ("base-dirs") where you have git repositories and save it to a file. These are just "top level" folders, and might look something like:

~/Dev/src-repos
~/Documents/Work-projects
~/Documents/Personal-projects

2. Then run git_status_checker.py with:

> python -m git_status_checker -f <file-with-list-of-basedirs>

Running on a schedule, Windows:

It is convenient to run the git_status_checker.py script on a schedule, e.g. once a week or every afternoon, and display a message if any uncommitted changes or outstanding commits where found.

One way to do this in Windows is to use Task Scheduler to run git_status_checker. To do this:

1. Open Task Scheduler
2. Optionally create a Task Library folder to store your own tasks in, so they are not mixed with all the other Task Scheduler tasks.
3. Select "Create Basic Task..." (e.g. from the "Action(s)" panel or menu item, or right-click the folder).
4. Under name, type something like "Git status checker of Dev and Projects folders", and under description something like "Run git_status_checker.py script on ~/Dev and ~/Documents/Projects folders". (adapt name and description according to where your git repositories are located).
5. Under "Trigger", select "Daily" (or weekly, etc). You can adjust this afterwards.
6. Under the next tab, select when you would like the task to run.
7. Under "Action", select "Start a program".
8. Under "Start a Program", the Program/script should be the python interpreter and "Add arguments" should be the path to git_status_checker.py, and the arguments needed, e.g.: -m git_status_checker --wait --ignore-untracked "~/Dev" "~/Documents/Projects"
   • OBS: It is a good idea to copy/paste the values you just entered above into a command prompt, and check that git-status-checker runs correctly.
9. On the "Finish" screen, review your scheduled task and press "Finish".
10. Test that your program works, by right-clicking your task and select "Run".

Running in a batch script:

In some circumstances you may want to run git_status_checker.py from within batch script.

See batch script examples in the examples/ folder.

Variations

The script provides for a range of choices on how you use it:

• You can provide base-dirs directly at the command line
• You can use multiple base-dirs-files.
• You can provide a --config file with command line args (if you don't want to specify them on the command line).
• You can use --no-recursive command line argument to disable recursive walking (it is then assumed that all "basedirs" are git repositories).
• You can use the --ignorefile argument to provide glob filters to exclude directories from scanning.
• If --ignorefile is not given but the current directory contains a file ".git_checker_ignore", this is used as ignorefile. (Similar to how git automatically ignores files in .gitignore).

Exit codes:

The program will exit with the following exit codes:

• 0 → Indicating that NO "dirty" repositories were found (repositories with outstanding changes to be committed or commits to be pushed/pulled).
• 1 → Indicating that "dirty" repositories were found.
• Other exit codes indicates that there was an error running the program, e.g. bad arguments.

Command line reference:

> python git-status-checker\git_status_checker\git_status_checker.py --help

usage: git_status_checker.py [-h] [--verbose] [--testing]
                             [--loglevel LOGLEVEL] [--recursive]
                             [--no-recursive] [--followlinks]
                             [--no-followlinks] [--ignore-untracked]
                             [--check-fetch] [--wait] [--config CONFIG]
                             [--dirfile DIRFILE [DIRFILE ...]]
                             [--ignorefile IGNOREFILE]
                             [basedir [basedir ...]]

Git status checker script.

positional arguments:
  basedir               One or more base directories to scan. A directory can
                        be either (a) a git repository, or (b) a directory
                        containing one or more git repositories. Basically it
                        just scans recursively, considering all directories
                        with a '.git' subfolder a git repository.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --verbose, -v         Increase verbosity.
  --testing             Run app in simple test mode.
  --loglevel LOGLEVEL   Set logging output threshold level.
  --recursive           Scan the given basedirs recursively. This is the
                        default.
  --no-recursive        Disable recursive scanning. Any 'basedir' must be a
                        git repository.
  --followlinks         Follow symbolic links when walking/scanning the
                        basedirs.
  --no-followlinks
  --ignore-untracked    Ignore untracked files.
  --check-fetch         Check if origin has changes that can be fetched. This
                        is disabled by default, since it requires making a lot
                        of remote requests which could be expensive.
  --wait                If changes are found, wait for input before
                        continuing. This is typically used to prevent the
                        command prompt from closing when executing as e.g. a
                        scheduled task.
  --config CONFIG, -c CONFIG
                        Instead of providing command line arguments at the
                        command line, you can write arguments in a yaml file
                        (as a dictionary).
  --dirfile DIRFILE [DIRFILE ...], -f DIRFILE [DIRFILE ...]
                        Instead of listing basedirs on the command line, you
                        can list them in a file.
  --ignorefile IGNOREFILE
                        File with directories to ignore (glob patterns). Note:
                        Basedirs are NEVER ignored by glob patterns in
                        ignorefile.

Notes:

The way I've set my stuf up is that I have a .git_checker_ignore in my main "repository" folder, ~/Dev/src-repos/, which lists all non-git repositories/folders. (I have more git repositories than non-git folders, so this is easiest for me). I then simply run:

python -m git-status-checker --ignore-untracked ~/Dev/src-repos

Oh, and yes, you can use "~" and "*" to specify files and folders, even on Windows.