FLASHBAKE(1)						      General Commands Manual						      FLASHBAKE(1)

NAME

       flashbake - automated snapshots with git

SYNOPSIS

       flashbake [options] <project_dir> [quiet_min]

DESCRIPTION

       flashbake  is  a  tool  which watches files and automatically checks them in to a git repository. The commit lines can be customised. It is
       meant to be run from a cron job (see crontab(5) ). Thus it simplifies life for user by taking off the burden of manually committing changes
       and allowing one to focus on the work.

       quiet_min  is a parameter to flashbake which tells it to only commit changes to files in the project that have not been changed in the last
       quiet_min minutes. Setting this to 0 or omitting this disables the quiet period and flashbake  immediately commits all changes when run.

       One of the nice features of flashbake is its generation of automatic commit messages using its plugin system. flashbake's plugins can  pull
       in data from various sources including your microblogging feeds, uptime, weather etc.  and use that to generate the commit message.

       If  you	are  new  to  flashbake,  check  out  the CONFIGURATION and USAGE sections below for more information; you can also check the wiki
       (address given in SEE ALSO).

OPTIONS

       flashbake follows the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options starting with two dashes (`-'). A summary  of  options  is  included
       below. For a complete description, see the online documentation.

       --version
	      show version number and exit

       -h, --help
	      show summary of options.

       -c, --context
	      just generate and show the commit message, don't check for changes.

       -v, --verbose
	      include debug information in the output, useful for reporting problems.

       -q, --quiet
	      disable all output except errors

       -d, --dryrun
	      do not change anything, just show what flashbake would do if executed without the -d option (dry run).

       -p PLUGIN_DIR, --plugins=PLUGIN_DIR
	      specify an additional location for plugins

       -r, --purge
	      purge any files that have been deleted from source control

CONFIGURATION

       flashbake is quite easy to setup and does not require knowledge of git internals. As flashbake requires a git repository, you must create a
       git repository for the folder you wish to track by cd'ing into the folder and typing git init (if you have not done so already).

       flashbake configuration is done through a .flashbake file in the project directory. Global  options  for  flashbake  can  be  specified	in
       ~/.flashbake/config  where  ~  refers to the home directory (like /home/joe on Linux or /Users/joe on Mac OS X). If the ~/.flashbake/config
       file is present then it will get read first, followed by the project specific version.

       flashbake tracks changes to only specific files which it terms as hot files. You have to specify these hot file	names  in  the	.flashbake
       file  which  should  be	created  in the project directory. Wildcards which are used in the shell can be used, like ? for matching a single
       character, * for matching any number of characters and [] for ranges of characters ([0-9] would match a single digit from 0 to 9 in a file-
       name).

EXAMPLE

       Here follows an example .flashbake file (taken from the wiki), with explanatory comments.

       # this enables the feed plugin
       plugins:flashbake.plugins.feed:Feed
       # these three lines are used by the feed plugin, see the Plugins page for
       # more info
       feed_url:http://www.mysite.com/feed
       # author is optional
       feed_author:Joe Random
       # limit is optional, defaults to 5 if unused
       feed_limit:3

       # this line is optional, omit it to disable email
       notice_to:joe@mysite.com
       # alternately, if you set up an ssh tunnel, you can set this and send
       # through
       # the tunnel
       #smtp_port:5002

       # hot files
       todo.txt
       my_novel.txt
       extra/character_notes.txt
       extra/story_bible.txt

       Any  line  beginning with # is a comment, of course. The notice_to: specifies an email address to mail when flashbake encounters some prob-
       lems with a hot file. This functionality is not mandatory and you can comment notice_to: out to disable it.

USAGE

       This section shows some typical usage patterns of flashbake.

       If you run

       flashbake -c ~/my_novel

       flashbake will not commit any changes, rather it will show you the commit message it would generate if run normally.  This  is  useful  for
       checking that you've entered the options in the control file correctly and checking the commit message content.

       Running

       flashbake -d ~/my_novel

       would make flashbake do a dry run, and it will do everything except actually updating the repository.

       One of the most common ways to run flashbake is to run it under cron for example, putting this in your crontab(5)
       */15 * * * * flashbake ~/my_novel 5 > /dev/null
       would  make  flashbake  run  every  fifteen  minutes,  checking in changes to the hot files in the ~/my_novel directory which have not been
       changed in the last five minutes.

BUGS

       The bug tracker is at http://github.com/commandline/flashbake/issues.  If you are experiencing problems, try out a newer version first,	if
       available.

SEE ALSO

       A more extensive documentation for flashbake can be found at its wiki site at: http://wiki.github.com/commandline/flashbake/.

       A list of available plugins with the accompanying documentation can be found at: http://wiki.github.com/commandline/flashbake/plugins

AUTHOR

       Written by Thomas Gideon.

       This manual page was written by Abhishek Dasgupta <abhidg@gmail.com>, for the Debian project (but may be used by others).

								   June 30, 2010						      FLASHBAKE(1)