Automatically backup changes to a directory to git.

bolthole
    [--ignore GLOB [--ignore ...]]          # autoignored: .git, .gitignore
    [--author AUTHOR] [--message TEXT]      # override your git config
    [--grace SECONDS] [--bundle SECONDS]    # allow for rapid edits to finish
    [--remote NAME [--remote ...]]          # push changes upstream
    [--verbose] [--show-git] [--timeless]
        [--watchdog-debug]                  # control verbosity
    [--dry-run]                             # test it first
    [--once]                                # no ongoing monitoring
    source_dir                              # what to monitor
    [dest_dir]                              # optionally copy to repo

bolthole .

Assumes the directory is already git controlled, and will refuse to start if not. It will commit any outstanding changes. If --once was used, it will then stop, otherwise it will watch for changes until killed, committing them.

bolthole project/ pristine-copy/

If pristine-copy doesn't exist, it will copy it and create a git repository there, or it will check that if directory is already git controlled and will refuse to start if not. It will commit any outstanding changes. If --once was used, it will then stop, otherwise it will watch for changes until killed, committing them.

The --grace SECONDS option will wait until the amount of time specified has passed before committing the file, and will restart the timer after each change. This way, if a file is being edited repeatedly in a short span of time, the result would be only one commit, not many.

The --bundle SECONDS option allows for multiple file changes to be bundled together in one commit rather than one commit per file, as long as they all happened at roughly the same time. The bundle time is how recently a file needs to have been changed in order to be excluded from the bundle.

For example, with a grace period of five minutes, and a bundle window of one minute:

• at t = 0m00s — foo.txt is edited, and a timer for it is set for 300 seconds
• at t = 0m30s — bar.txt is edited, and a timer for it is set for 300s (we now have foo.txt at 270s, bar.txt at 300s)
• at t = 4m30s — baz.txt is edited, and a timer for it is set for 300s (we now have foo.txt at 30s, bar.txt at 60s, baz.txt at 300s)
• at t = 5m00s — the foo.txt timer goes off (we now have foo.txt at 0s, bar.txt at 30s, baz.txt at 270s); the changes to foo.txt and bar.txt were both made earlier than the bundle window, and one commit is made with both changes
• at t = 9m30s — baz.txt is committed

Bolthole is installed from pypi:

pip install bolthole