repowatch

Every git repo under a folder, compared across all of its remotes.

Point repowatch at your code folder. It finds every repo, then shows one row per repo with a column per remote, so you can see at a glance where each copy stands: local, GitHub, a self-hosted Gitea, a backup.

It's built for people who keep the same code in more than one place, for example GitHub plus a work or home Gitea, or one machine at work and another at home. It answers three questions:

1. Where does everything stand? A matrix of every repo against every remote.
2. Can it level them for me, safely? sync fast-forwards your secondary remote and your local checkout to match the primary, in both directions. It never force-pushes or merges.
3. What's all this branch clutter? prune deletes branches whose work is already in main, including squash-merged ones, and explains every branch it keeps.

Install

Requires Python 3.11+ and git on your PATH.

pipx install repowatch        # or: uv tool install repowatch

From source:

git clone https://github.com/markgwharry/repowatch && cd repowatch
pipx install .

On Windows, use Windows Terminal, which is the default on Windows 11. The legacy console mangles the arrows. In Git Bash, write paths with forward slashes (./repowatch), because backslashes get eaten.

Quick start

repowatch ~/code                     # interactive matrix
repowatch ~/code --fetch             # fetch every remote first
repowatch status ~/code              # print the matrix once
repowatch status ~/code --json       # machine-readable, for scripts and dashboards
repowatch init                       # write a commented config file

Set root in the config and plain repowatch opens your code folder.

Reading the matrix

Repo             Branch  Local            github         gitea        Status
core-lib         main    965f254 ✓        965f254 =      965f254 =    ok
cli-tool         main    e5c17be ✓        f4a93cd ↑2     f4a93cd ↑2   push
ticker           main    5cd32d9 ✓        5cd32d9 =      e88d620 ↑1   mirror lag
work/tracker     main    577c22d ✓        5296d38 ↓1     577c22d =    pull mirror lag
work/analysis    main    fe0af99 ~1 ?1 $1 883a7b7 ↑1 ↓1  c458ab1 ↑1   dirty untracked stash diverged

Each remote cell shows that remote's tip of your current branch, and how your local HEAD compares with it:

Local shows HEAD plus + staged, ~ modified, ? untracked, ! conflicts and $ stashes, or ✓ when clean.

Columns are labelled by host, not remote name. origin → github.com and upstream → github.com both appear under github. Map your own hosts in the config.

TUI keys

Sync

Keeps a secondary remote (e.g. Gitea) and your local checkout level with a primary remote (e.g. GitHub).

repowatch sync                      # dry run: the plan, nothing changed
repowatch sync --apply
repowatch sync --apply --repo my-service --repo docs

Everything is fast-forward only:

By default only main/master are synced and dependabot/* is skipped. Change sync_branches and sync_exclude (glob lists) in the config.

A protected branch on the primary rejects a secondary-ahead push. That's reported as a failed step and nothing else is affected. Unattended runs over SSH need a key without a passphrase, or a running agent; otherwise that remote shows as unreachable and is skipped.

Run sync on a schedule

repowatch schedule              # hourly via Windows Task Scheduler (silent, via pythonw)
repowatch schedule --every 30
repowatch schedule --remove

Output goes to sync.log in the config folder and rotates at 1 MB. On macOS and Linux, schedule prints a crontab line for you to add.

Prune

Deletes stale branches on the primary remote.

repowatch prune                          # dry run: what goes, and why the rest stay
repowatch prune --apply
repowatch prune --include-unmerged 180   # also abandoned branches, >180 days old, with no open PR
repowatch prune -v                       # also list merged branches it keeps

It never deletes the default branch, anything matching prune_keep (default main, master, develop, release/*), anything younger than prune_min_age_days (default 7), or the branch you have checked out. Unmerged branches are only deleted with --include-unmerged, and only after the GitHub CLI (gh) confirms they have no open PR. Without gh, they're never touched. Deletions are verified against the remote afterwards.

To stop branches piling up again: gh repo edit OWNER/REPO --delete-branch-on-merge.

Configuration

repowatch init writes a commented file to:

• Windows: %APPDATA%\repowatch\config.toml
• macOS / Linux: ~/.config/repowatch/config.toml, or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/repowatch/config.toml

root = "~/code"
depth = 3                            # folder levels to search
refresh_seconds = 30                 # TUI local auto-refresh; 0 = off
fetch_timeout = 25                   # seconds, per remote
column_order = ["github", "gitea"]
primary_labels = ["github"]          # sync's source of truth; prune's target
mirror_labels = ["gitea"]            # kept level by sync; lag shown as "mirror lag"
sync_branches = ["main", "master"]
sync_exclude = ["dependabot/*"]
prune_keep = ["main", "master", "develop", "release/*"]
prune_min_age_days = 7

[hosts]                              # host -> column label (exact match, then substring)
"git.example.internal" = "gitea"
"192.168.1.20" = "gitea"

[remote_templates]                   # pre-fills the TUI's add-remote dialog
gitea = "https://git.example.internal/{owner}/{repo}.git"

Use repowatch --config other.toml … to point at a different file.

How it behaves

• Remote columns are only as fresh as your last fetch. r and the auto-refresh are local-only; f, F, --fetch, sync and prune go to the network.
• It never prompts. Terminal prompts, credential-manager pop-ups and interactive SSH are disabled. A remote that needs input shows ✗ and the reason, rather than hanging. Cached credentials (credential managers, keychain, ssh-agent) work normally.
• Each remote is fetched separately, with a timeout, so an unreachable Gitea doesn't hold up GitHub.
• Discovery stops at the first .git. It doesn't descend into repos, and it skips node_modules, .venv, build and similar.
• Don't keep repos in a cloud-synced folder (OneDrive, Dropbox, iCloud). Sync clients lock and duplicate files inside .git. Your remotes are the backup.

Contributing

Issues and PRs are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md. The test suite builds throwaway repos with GitHub- and Gitea-style remotes for every state repowatch distinguishes, and runs on Windows, macOS and Linux.

Licence

MIT