-nogit: Using git to track files without using git
+nogit: Using git to track files without the user using git
Summary
=======
invokes "nogit sync". And the user will not be prompted to fill out a
commit message or to resolve conflicts, etc.
+This is not intended as an alternative to git. If you're already using
+git, please continue to do so, (creating clean code history with
+detailed commit messages, etc.). Instead, nogit is intended for text
+files that you otherwise wouldn't have even put into git. And
+specifically, it's only suitable for text files where a naive "union
+merge" is the right thing. To be precise, a nogit merge will always
+silently give you "both sides" of any merge conflict, and will not
+provide any conflict markers, (it won't even indicate that any
+conflict happened). It also won't give any predictable behavior on the
+ordering of lines in cases like this. So if your data isn't safe
+against that kind of corruption, then you'll probably not want to use
+it with nogit.
+
+The original data for which nogit was invented for was a simple TODO
+list where different people were adding items they wanted to work on,
+then removing them when they completed them. These people wanted to
+keep each other informed about their activities, so they wanted to
+share items in a single file. But there was no functional significance
+to the order of items. Finally, it was unlikely that two people would
+edit any one item in two different ways, (and even if they did it
+would be trivial and painless to sort this out after the fact).
+
Installation
============
The nogit implementation is a simple bash script named "nogit". To
"nogit sync" from an autoamted system, (such as a text editor's hook
when saving a file).
+Integration with emacs
+======================
+If you're an emacs user, here is some code you could put into your
+.emacs file to have "nogit sync" called automatically for you for any
+nogit-controlled files whenever you open one, begin editing it, or
+save it:
+
+ ; Run "nogit sync" if there is a .noggit directory here.
+ ;
+ ; Note: There is an important protection built into this implementation:
+ ;
+ ; We bind 'in-nogit-sync and test whether it's bound to avoid
+ ; infinite recursion. This could otherwise come about because
+ ; the revert-buffer function could trigger the find-file-hook
+ ; and recurse.
+ (defun nogit-sync-if-configured ()
+ (interactive)
+ (if (and
+ (buffer-file-name)
+ (file-exists-p (format "%s/../.nogit" (buffer-file-name)))
+ (not (boundp 'in-nogit-sync))
+ )
+ (let ((in-nogit-sync t))
+ (message (substring (shell-command-to-string "nogit sync") 0 -1))
+ (revert-buffer nil t)
+ )
+ )
+ )
+
+ ; Arrange to run "nogit sync" when the user loads a nogit-controlled file,
+ ; starts editing it for the first time, or saves it.
+ (add-hook 'find-file-hook 'nogit-sync-if-configured)
+ (add-hook 'first-change-hook 'nogit-sync-if-configured)
+ (add-hook 'after-save-hook 'nogit-sync-if-configured)
+
+Preparing git repositories for use with nogit
+=============================================
If you're interested in setting up a parent and child repository for
use with nogit, here's what you'll want to do:
Motivation
==========
-
I originally came up with nogit when I started maintaining a simple
TODO file for a project which had a code implementation split across
multiple code repositories. I was intentionally keeping my TODO file