Swift git handover with mob

Swift git handover with 'mob'.

mob is an open source command line tool written in go
mob is the fastest way to hand over code via git and feels ubersmooth
mob keeps your branches clean and only creates WIP commits on temporary wip branches
mob supports multiple wip branches per base branch
mob notifies you when it's time to handover
mob can moo

How to install

curl -sL install.mob.sh | sh

If you are under Windows, you can use git bash to install mob.

You can also install it on macOS via homebrew:

brew install remotemobprogramming/brew/mob

How to use

You only need three commands: mob start, mob next, and mob done. Switch to a separate branch with mob start and handover to the next person with mob next. Continue with mob start and handover to the next person with mob next. Continue with mob start and handover to the next person with mob next. Continue with mob start and handover to the next person with mob next. ... When you're done, get your changes into the staging area of the master branch with mob done and commit them.

USAGE
mob start [<minutes>] [--include-uncommitted-changes|-i] [--branch|-b <branch>]# start mob session in wip branch
mob next [--stay|-s] [--return-to-base-branch|-r]		# handover to next person and switch back to base branch
mob done 			# finish mob session by squashing all changes in wip branch to index in base branch
mob reset [--branch|-b <branch>]# removes local and remote wip branch
mob status 			# show status
mob timer <minutes>		# start a <minutes> timer
mob config 			# print configuration
mob moo 			# moo!
mob version 			# print version number
mob help 			# print usage

Add --debug to any option to enable verbose logging

EXAMPLES
mob start 10 			# start 10 min session in wip branch 'mob-session'
mob start --branch green 	# start session in wip branch 'mob/<base-branch>/green'
mob next --stay			# handover code and stay on wip branch
mob done 			# get changes back to base branch
mob moo 			# be amazed

How does it work

mob start creates branch mob-session and pulls from origin/mob-session
mob next pushes all changes to origin/mob-sessionin a mob next [ci-skip] commit
mob done squashes all changes in mob-session into staging of master and removes mob-session and origin/mob-session
mob timer 10 start a ten minute timer
mob start 10 combines mob start and mob timer 10
mob status display the mob session status and all the created WIP commits
mob reset deletes mob-session and origin/mob-session
mob config print configuration

Screen Share Integration

Mob no longer supports starting the screen share on 'mob start'. Why? At first, this feature sounds awesome. In practice, however, that feature wasn't much help. It only simulated keying in a keyboard shortcut and had several shortcomings:

it needed to be configured correctly,
it only toggled screen share, so one had to keep in mind whether one was already screen sharing or not, and
it solely supported Zoom on macOS and Linux.

The feature promised too much, and delivered very little of it.

Still, that keyboard shortcut to toggle screen sharing in Zoom is still very helpful. Just press the hotkey yourself. It is, however, essential to make the shortcut globally available (Zoom > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts). Otherwise, the hotkey won't work. More tips on setting up Zoom for effective screen sharing.

More on Installation

Scoop

On Windows, if you use Scoop then just download the mob.json file, open a PowerShell terminal in that directory and:

scoop install mob

Linux Timer

To get the timer to play "mob next" on your speakers when your time is up, you'll need an installed speech engine. Install that on Debian/Ubuntu/Mint as follows:

sudo apt-get install espeak-ng-espeak mbrola-us1

Create a little script in your $PATH called say with the following content:

#!/bin/sh
espeak -v us-mbrola-1 "$@"

How to configure

Show your current configuration with mob config:

MOB_REMOTE_NAME=origin
MOB_WIP_COMMIT_MESSAGE=mob next [ci-skip]
MOB_VOICE_COMMAND=say
MOB_NOTIFY_COMMAND=/usr/bin/osascript -e 'display notification "%s"'
MOB_NEXT_STAY=false
MOB_START_INCLUDE_UNCOMMITTED_CHANGES=false
MOB_DEBUG=false

Override default value permanently via environment variables:

export MOB_DEBUG=true

Override default value just for a single call:

MOB_DEBUG=true mob next

How to contribute

Propose your change in an issue or directly create a pull request with your improvements.

git version # >= 2.17
go version # >= 1.14.4 

go build # builds 'mob'

go test # runs all tests
go test -run TestDetermineBranches # runs the single test named 'TestDetermineBranches'

# run tests and show test coverage in browser
go test -coverprofile=cover.out && go tool cover -html=cover.out

Design Concepts

mob is a thin wrapper around git.
mob is not interactive.
mob owns its wip branches. It will create wip branches, make commits, push them, but also delete them.
mob requires the user to do changes in non-wip branches.
mob provides a copy'n'paste solution if it encounters an error.
mob relies on information accessible via git.
mob provides only a few environment variables for configuration.
mob only uses the Go standard library and no 3rd party plugins.

Credits

Developed and maintained by Dr. Simon Harrer.

Contributions and testing by Jochen Christ, Martin Huber, Franziska Dessart, Nikolas Hermann and Christoph Welcz. Thank you!

Logo designed by Sonja Scheungrab.

neochrome / mob