Async Git Auto-Commit File Watcher

A Rust-based file system watcher that automatically commits (and optionally pushes) changes to a Git repository whenever files are modified. Built with tokio for async I/O and notify for cross-platform file system events, it uses a debouncing strategy to batch rapid successive changes into a single commit.

✨ Features

• Recursive file watching — monitors the current directory and all subdirectories.
• Smart debouncing — waits for file system "event storms" to settle (default: 3 seconds) before committing, avoiding noisy commits during bulk operations like npm install or code formatting.
• Auto-commit & push — stages all changes, commits with a default message, and pushes to the configured remote (if any).
• Pre-flight sanity checks — verifies the repository is clean and in sync with its upstream before starting.
• Bare repo auto-init — if GIT_DIR and GIT_WORK_TREE are set and missing, they are created and initialised automatically.
• Filters noise — ignores Access events which would otherwise trigger unnecessary commits.

📦 Requirements

• Rust (1.70+ recommended) with Cargo
• git available on your PATH
• A Git repository (or the ability to create one via GIT_DIR/GIT_WORK_TREE environment variables)

🚀 Installation

From crates.io (recommended)

cargo install watch-and-commit

This downloads, compiles, and places the wac binary in ~/.cargo/bin/. Make sure that directory is on your PATH (the rustup installer adds it automatically).

wac --help

From source

Clone the repository and build:

git clone https://github.com/rodolfovillaruz/watch-and-commit
cd watch-and-commit
cargo build --release

The compiled binary will be available at target/release/wac.

Dependencies

This project uses the following crates (add to your Cargo.toml if setting up from scratch):

[dependencies]
tokio = { version = "1", features = ["full"] }
notify = "8"

🏃 Usage

Basic usage

From inside any Git repository:

cargo run --release

The watcher will:

1. Run pre-flight checks on the current working directory.
2. Start monitoring the current directory (.) recursively.
3. Debounce events and auto-commit whenever the dust settles.

Press Ctrl+C to stop.

Using a detached work tree

You can watch a directory while storing the Git metadata in a separate bare repository by setting the standard Git environment variables:

export GIT_DIR=/path/to/bare/repo.git
export GIT_WORK_TREE=/path/to/watched/files
cargo run --release

If either directory does not exist, it will be created, and a bare repository will be initialised at GIT_DIR automatically.

🔄 How It Works

┌─────────────────┐    events     ┌──────────────┐    batched    ┌───────────────┐
│  notify Watcher │──────────────▶│  Debouncer   │──────────────▶│ Event Handler │
│  (file system)  │   (mpsc tx)   │ (tokio task) │  (3s window)  │  + git commit │
└─────────────────┘               └──────────────┘               └───────────────┘

1. notify::RecommendedWatcher produces events for any change in the watched directory.
2. Events are sent over a bounded tokio::sync::mpsc channel (capacity: 100).
3. The debouncer receives the first event, then keeps collecting events until a quiet period of debounce_duration (3 seconds) has elapsed.
4. The accumulated batch is handed off to the event handler, which:
   • Logs each event.
   • Runs git add ..
   • Checks if anything was actually staged (skips empty commits).
   • Runs git commit -m "Update".
   • Runs git push (only if a remote is configured).

🛡️ Pre-flight Checks

Before the watcher starts, it runs a series of checks to ensure a sane starting state:

If no remote is configured, sync checks are skipped with a friendly notice.

⚙️ Configuration

Currently, configuration is done by editing src/main.rs:

• Debounce window — Duration::from_secs(3) in main().
• Watched path — Path::new(".") in main().
• Commit message — "Update" in src/event_handler.rs::run_git_commit.
• Channel capacity — mpsc::channel(100) in main().

📂 Project Structure

src/
├── main.rs            # Entry point, pre-flight checks, watcher setup
├── debouncer.rs       # Async debouncing logic over an mpsc::Receiver
└── event_handler.rs   # Event pretty-printing and git operations

⚠️ Caveats

• Force-commits everything: git add . stages all changes in the work tree. Use a good .gitignore.
• Fixed commit message: every commit is "Update". No change summarisation (yet).
• No rate limiting on push: if you make rapid-fire edits on a slow connection, git push may queue up.
• Not recommended for public-facing branches: this tool is designed for personal notes, scratch repos, and "save every change" workflows — not for shared production branches.

🧪 Example Output

--- Async File Watcher with 3-Second Debounce ---
Fetching from remote...
Fetch complete.
✅ Repository is clean and in sync with 'origin/main'.
Monitoring changes in: '.'
Press Ctrl+C to exit.
-> Event received. Starting debounce timer...
-> Event received. Resetting debounce timer...

=======================================================
✅ DEBOUNCED ACTION! Processing 2 events...
=======================================================
[MODIFY] File content changed: ./notes.md
[MODIFY] File content changed: ./notes.md
-------------------------------------------------------
🚀 Executing git auto-commit...
-> Running: git add .
[SUCCESS] Staged changes.
-> Running: git commit -m "Update"
[SUCCESS] Committed changes:
[main a1b2c3d] Update
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)
-> Running: git push
[SUCCESS] Pushed changes.
-------------------------------------------------------

📄 License

Add your preferred license here (e.g. MIT, Apache-2.0).

🙏 Acknowledgements

• notify — cross-platform file system notifications.
• tokio — asynchronous runtime for Rust.