git-multi

Summary

Execute the same git command in a set of related repos.

There are plenty of other utilities out there that do something similar, but typically they only support a limited number of hard-coded git commands which can be executed in multiple repositories.

git-multi is different: any git command (including any git extensions you may have installed or any git aliases you may have defined) can be executed in multiple repositories.

git-multi only concerns itself with iterating over the set of related repos; what it executes in each of them is completely up to you.

Example

The man page shows other uses and options for git multi but its main purpose is to iterate over a list of related git repositories (known as a "multi-repo") and execute the same git command in each and every one:

A typical git multi invocation has the following anatomy:

$ git multi ++pvdb status --short
 └─┬───────┘
   └─► invoke the custom "git-multi" subcommand

$ git multi ++pvdb status --short
           └──┬───┘
              └─► specify the name of a multi-repo (optional)

$ git multi ++pvdb status --short
                  └──────┬───────┘
                         └─► regular git command or alias, incl. options

In the above example, the git status --short command is executed in each git repository in the ++pvdb multi-repo; the name of the multi-repo (++pvdb in the above example) is optional: without it git multi will iterate over all git repos in all configured multi-repos.

Features

• execute any git command, extension and alias in multiple repositories (not just a limited set of pre-packaged commands)
• human-friendly output in interactive mode (akin to git porcelain commands), for every day use
• machine parseable output in non-interactive mode (akin to git plumbing commands), for advanced scripting and automation

Prerequisites

git-multi is a Ruby script, so you will have to have Ruby installed on your system (system Ruby, RVM, rbenv, etc).

git-multi is also tightly coupled to your GitHub account (via the github API), so you will also need to generate a so-called personal access token and install it in your git config (instructions provided below).

Installation

$ gem install git-multi

Usage

Installing the gem installs the git-multi executable on your system's ${PATH}, which means it can be run as a so-called git subcommand, as follows:

$ git multi

A good starting point is the git-multi man page:

$ git multi -h

... or if you prefer to read it in a web browser:

$ git multi --html

Using the "full name" convention

On your local filesystem, git repositories need to use paths that follow the "full name" convention used by github.com (as well as other websites like gitlab.com), ie. the last two path components for the pvdb/git-multi repository should be pvdb and git-multi respectively, as illustrated on this table:

	full name	owner	name	URL / path
	pvdb/git-multi	pvdb	git-multi
GitHub				https://github.com/pvdb/git-multi
filesytem				${HOME}/Workarea/pvdb/git-multi

Put differently: if you typically create your git repositories in ${HOME}/Workarea, and you have the following three git repos...

pvdb/git-multi
pvdb/git-semaphore
pvdb/git-switcher

... then their respective paths should be:

${HOME}/Workarea/pvdb/git-multi
${HOME}/Workarea/pvdb/git-semaphore
${HOME}/Workarea/pvdb/git-switcher

... and the directory tree should look like:

${HOME}/Workarea
└── pvdb
    ├── git-multi
    │   └── .git
    ├── git-semaphore
    │   └── .git
    └── git-switcher
        └── .git

So first you have a directory corresponding to the repository owner (pvdb) and one level down you have a directory corresponding to the repository name (git-multi, git-semaphore and git-switcher respectively).

Known Issues

1. it probably doesn't work on Windows

Contributing

1. Fork it ( https://github.com/pvdb/git-multi/fork )
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create a new Pull Request