This is a conversion of my simple scripts to version my home directory with very specific excludes and formatting every file upon commit so that readable diffs can be generated.

pip install baldwin

 $ bw -h
Usage: bw [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  Manage a home directory with Git.

Options:
  -d, --debug  Enable debug logging.
  -h, --help   Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  auto-commit
  format
  git
  info
  init
  install-units

In addition to the bw command, hgit is a shortcut for bw git.

bw init

Find out where the bare Git directory is by running bw info. This can be done even if init has not been run.

bw install-units

This will install a timer that will automatically make a new commit every 6 hours. It does not push.

Keep in mind that systemd units require a full path to the executable, so you must keep the unit up-to-date if you move where you install this package. Simply run bw install-units again.

Note that user systemd units only run while logged in.

To disable and remove the units, use the following commands:

systemctl disable --now home-vcs.timer
rm ~/.config/systemd/user/home-vcs.*

To push, use either of the following:

• bw git push
• hgit push

The above also demonstrates that bw git/hgit are just frontends to git with the correct environment applied.

If Prettier is installed, it will be used to format files. The configuration used comes with this package. Having consistent formatting allows for nice diffs to be generated.

If you have initialised a repository without having prettier or jq in PATH, you need to run the following commands to enable readable diffs:

hgit config diff.json.textconv 'jq -MS .'
hgit config diff.json.cachetextconv true
hgit config diff.yaml.textconv 'prettier --no-editorconfig --parser yaml'
hgit config diff.yaml.cachetextconv true

If you have the XML plugin installed:

hgit config diff.xml.textconv 'prettier --no-editorconfig --parser xml --xml-whitespace-sensitivity ignore'
hgit config diff.xml.cachetextconv true

Any file that is untracked and detected to be binary will not be added. Use hgit add to add a binary file manually.

Default .gitignore and .gitattributes files are installed on initialisation. They are never modified by this tool. Please customise as necessary.