X-Git-Url: https://git.cworth.org/git?a=blobdiff_plain;f=README;h=bae558f7e2e9283bf55694e1578fceadbf227c99;hb=96391d13f96d3b7f9c4d31b6e6372a29f992886e;hp=95ea89db988439eb0aebb479e45029990a8e73d6;hpb=6e84162358f7bd36bbe093a8deae2cc8aa0b7bcd;p=nogit

diff --git a/README b/README
index 95ea89d..bae558f 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -1,14 +1,36 @@
-nogit: Using git to track files without using git
+nogit: Using git to track files without the user using git
 
 Summary
 =======
 Let's see, nogit is a very simple tool that uses git under the hood to
-allow for collaboration on files, but without requiring the the
+allow for collaboration on files, but without requiring the
 collaborators to invoke git commands. Any time a user might invoke
 "git commit", or "git push", or "git pull", etc. the user instead just
 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
@@ -35,33 +57,58 @@ sync" should not ever ask for user input, so it's appropriate to call
 "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)
+    (save-match-data
+      (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:
-
-    In the parent repository
-    ------------------------
-    Add the following to .gitignore:
-       .nogit
-       .gitattributes
-       Any files to be tracked in the child nogit repository
-
-    For the child repository
-    ------------------------
-    Create a new git repository
-    Add the files to be tracked via nogit
-    Add a .gitattributes file with contents such as:
+use with nogit, there's almost nothing to it. In the child repository,
+just put all of the files you want to be treated with nogit's
+semantics. You don't need to fiddle with any .gitattributes or
+merge=union configuration. The nogit clone will do everything
+necessary for you so you get those semantics.
 
-	* merge=union
-
-    The * is a pattern to match the files you're tracking. You don't
-    necessarily need to use '*' you can explicitly name the files of
-    interest. But the important thing is that all files tracked by
-    nogit use the "union" merge driver (so that merges don't result in
-    conflicts requiring user intervention).
+Then, in the parent repository, you'll simply want to augment your
+.gitignore file to ignore all nogit-managed files from the child
+repository as well as the ".nogit" directory itself.
 
 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