petergardfjall / gitdrive

Continuous git sync, a poor man's Google Docs

About

gitdrive continuously synchronizes modifications to git-tracked files, taking care of conflicts should they arise. It's intended to be a poor man's Google docs -- giving a combination of save-as-you-type functionality and simple synchronization of documents/files between multiple devices.

Personally I use it to keep my collection of org-mode files consistent across computers.

Any changes to tracked files in a local git repository (the 'watch dir') are periodically synced with its upstream remote in an attempt to keep the local repo up-to-date with the remote and persist changes as quickly as possible. The remote needs to be set up for password-less push or automation will fail.

Install

To install the gitdrive binary under $HOME/.cargo/bin run:

cargo install --path .

Run

To start syncing origin/master of a git directory run:

gitdrive /path/to/git-root-dir

The --branch and --remote flags can be used to change the remote and branch being synced to something other than the default origin/master.

Logging

By default, only INFO-level logs are output. To control the amount of log output use the RUST_LOG environment variable (trace, debug, info, warn, error).

RUST_LOG=debug cargo run -- <git directory>

Run as user-level systemd service

A convenient option for having gitdrive always sync a certain directory whenever the user is logged in is to execute gitdrive as a systemd (user-level) unit.

1. Modify the systemd unit template under systemd/gitdrive.service.

2. Place it under ~/.config/systemd/user/ and run

    # start service
    systemctl --user start  gitdrive.service
    # autostart service on future logins
    systemctl --user enable gitdrive.service
   

This will result in gitdrive being launched when the systemd --user instance starts up (usually when the user logs in for the first time) and it will be stopped, together with all other user systemd units, when the last user session exits.

To see output when gitdrive runs as a systemd unit, run:

 journalctl --user -f -u gitdrive