Install git-dude on OSX

gistfile1.md

This is a small instruction guide for installing git-dude on OSX. Git dude is a convenient git repo monitoring service.

Ensure you have Homebrew installed.

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Install growlnotify via brew install growlnotify.

If you are a Lion user and are getting No formula available, then you can just download growlnotify as a package

If you are a Snow Leopard user, See this gist on getting growlnotify to play nicely.

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Install git-dude via brew install https://raw.github.com/gist/1289314/git-dude.rb --HEAD

Make a ~/.git-dude directory where we will store repo mirrors for git-dude to monitor.

$ mkdir ~/.git-dude
$ cd ~/.git-dude

Clone a directory using the --mirror tag.

$ git clone --mirror git://github.com/username/yourrepo.git

Append the following convenience function to your ~/.bashrc

# Git dude repo monitoring service
# arg1: "stop" or "start"
function gd(){
	val="$1"

	if [ $val == "start" ]; then
		git dude ~/.git-dude &>/dev/null &
		printf "git-dude started\n"
	elif [ $val == "stop" ];	then
		ps aux | grep 'git[ -]dude' | awk '{print $2}' | xargs sudo kill -9
		printf "git-dude stopped\n"
	else
		printf "$val not valid. Use start/stop\n"
	fi
}

Now reload your ~/.bashrc and start git-dude! You should push to your repo to test it out.

$ source ~/.bashrc
$ gd start

To stop git-dude, just run gd stop

For configuration options ,including images and checking intervals, check out the git-dude readme

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Running git-dude on Login

Currently, you must execute gd start every time you log in if you want to monitor repos. I find this a bit cumbersome. To avoid such a cumbersome task, we will take advantage of OS X's Login Hooks.

Running git-dude as part of the login hook implies running git-dude as root. Consequently, we have to take some precautions. A huge issue is that the FETCH_HEAD file needed by git-dude is not created until the first time you run git fetch on a repo. In the event that the root user is the one who first runs git fetch through git-dude, FETCH_HEAD will belong to root and will thus not be usable by the script!

To avoid this, we create a convenience function that will create a mirrored clone of a repo and immediately run git fetch on it. Append the following to your ~/.bashrc

# Create a new repo clone  and immediately fetch to avoid 
# permission issue  with root when running in the background
# arg1: repo URL
function watch_repo(){
	
	# The folder where git-dude watches repos
	gitDudeWatchFolder=~/.git-dude
	cd $gitDudeWatchFolder

	repoURL=$1
	git clone --mirror $repoURL

	# Get the directory of the repo just pulled
	repoDir=$(basename $repoURL)

	# We need to `git fetch` immediately so that FETCH_HEAD is owned by the
	# user and NOT by root when running is a login hook
	cd $repoDir
	git fetch

	cd $gitDudeWatchFolder
	echo "Now watching $repoDir"
}

Remember to load the ~/.bashrc file into your session.

$ source ~/.bashrc

Now if you want to clone a repo for the purpose of watching it through git-dude, all you have to do is

$ watch_repo git://github.com/joequery/Rails-Template.git

If you're going to use the Login Hook to run git-dude upon login, you MUST create your repos with the provided bash function.

Now we actually create the login hook...

Change to your /Library directory and make a Hooks directory.

$ cd /Library
$ mkdir Hooks
$ cd Hooks

Now create a file called login in your favorite text editor.

$ vim login

Paste the following into the login file and save.

#!/bin/bash
/path/to/git dude /Users/YourUser/.git-dude &>/dev/null &

You can find your /path/to/git via

$ which git

NOTE: It's important that you reference absolute paths in your login script.

Now we need to make this login file executable.

$ chmod +x login

We now add the script to the login hook.

$ sudo defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook /Library/Hooks/login

Note that this modifies the /var/root/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow file if you ever want to undo it.

Feel free to log out and log back in. To check and see if the git-dude process is running, you can search for the process via

$ ps aux | grep "git-dude"

Enjoy your repo monitoring!