git-global

Use git-global to keep track of all the git repositories on your machine.

This is a Rust program that you can install with cargo install git-global. (To obtain cargo and Rust, see https://rustup.rs.) Once installed, you can optionally install the manpage with git global install-manpage

Once installed, you gain an extra git subcommand that you can run from anywhere to check up on all your git repos: git global. Use git global <subcommand> to:

git global ahead: show repos where branches contain commits that are not present on any of the remotes
git global info: show meta-information about git-global itself (configuration, number of known repos, etc.)
git global install-manpage: (non-functional) attempt to install git-global's manpage
git global list: show list of all known repos
git global scan: update the cache of known repos by searching your filesystem
git global staged: show status of the git index for repos with such changes
git global stashed: show stashes for all repos that have them
git global status: show git status -s for all your repos with any changes
git global unstaged: show status of the working directory for repos with such changes

Command-line flags

In addition to config-file-based options, there are a set of global command-line flags that take precedence:

--json: Print subcommand results in a JSON format.
--untracked: Show untracked files in subcommand results, e.g., for the status, staged, and unstaged subcommands.
--nountracked: Don't show untracked files in subcommand results, e.g., for the status, staged, and unstaged subcommands.

Configuration

To change the default behavior of git-global, you can do so with --- wait for it --- git's global configuration!

To set the root directory for repo discovery to something other than your home directory:

git config --global global.basedir /some/path

To add patterns to exclude while walking directories:

git config --global global.ignore .cargo,.vim,Library

The full list of configuration options supported in the global section of .gitconfig is:

basedir: The root directory for repo discovery (default: $HOME)
follow-symlinks: Whether to follow symbolic links during repo discovery (default: true)
same-filesystem: Whether to stay on the same filesystem as basedir during repo discovery (on Unix or Windows only) (default: true on Windows or Unix, false otherwise)
ignore: Comma-separated list of patterns to exclude while walking directories (default: none)
default-cmd: The default subcommand to run if unspecified, i.e., when running git global (default: status)
show-untracked: Whether to include untracked files in output (default: true)

Manpage generation

An up-to-date copy of the manpage lives in the repository at doc/git-global.1. To generate it from a local clone of the repo, run:

cargo run --bin generate-manpage --features=manpage > doc/git-global.1

Ideas

The following are some ideas about future subcommands and features:

git global dirty: show all repos that have changes of any kind
git global branched: show all repos not on master (TODO: or a different default branch in .gitconfig)
git global duplicates: show repos that are checked out to multiple places
git global remotes: show all remotes (TODO: why? maybe filter by hostname?)
git global add <path>: add a git repo to the cache that would not be found in a scan
git global ignore <path>: ignore a git repo and remove it from the cache
git global ignored: show which git repos are currently being ignored
git global monitor: launch a daemon to watch git dirs with inotify
git global pull: pull down changes from default tracking branch for clean repos
git global cd <fuzzy repo>: change to the directory of the matched repo (#6)
stream results to STDOUT as the come in (from git global status, for example, so we don't have to wait until they're all collected)
use locate .git if the DB is populated, instead of walking the filesystem
make a Subcommand trait
do concurrency generically, not just for the status subcommand

Release Notes