mr - Online in the Cloud

PROGRAM:

NAME

mr - a tool to manage all your version control repos

SYNOPSIS

mr [options] checkout

mr [options] update

mr [options] status

mr [options] clean [-f]

mr [options] commit [-m "message"]

mr [options] record [-m "message"]

mr [options] fetch

mr [options] push

mr [options] diff

mr [options] log

mr [options] grep pattern

mr [options] run command [param ...]

mr [options] bootstrap src [directory]

mr [options] register [repository]

mr [options] config section ["setting=[value]" ...]

mr [options] action [params ...]

mr [options] [online|offline]

mr [options] remember action [params ...]

DESCRIPTION

mr is a tool to manage all your version control repos. It can checkout, update, or perform
other actions on a set of repositories as if they were one combined repository. It
supports any combination of subversion, git, cvs, mercurial, bzr, darcs, fossil and
veracity repositories, and support for other version control systems can easily be added.

mr cds into and operates on all registered repositories at or below your working
directory. Or, if you are in a subdirectory of a repository that contains no other
registered repositories, it will stay in that directory, and work on only that repository,

mr is configured by .mrconfig files, which list the repositories. It starts by reading the
.mrconfig file in your home directory, and this can in turn chain load .mrconfig files
from repositories. It also automatically looks for a .mrconfig file in the current
directory, or in one of its parent directories.

These predefined commands should be fairly familiar to users of any version control
system:

checkout (or co)
Checks out any repositories that are not already checked out.

update
Updates each repository from its configured remote repository.

If a repository isn't checked out yet, it will first check it out.

status
Displays a status report for each repository, showing what uncommitted changes are
present in the repository. For distributed version control systems, also shows
unpushed local branches.

clean
Print ignored files, untracked files and other cruft in the working directory.

The optional -f parameter allows removing the files as well as printing them.

commit (or ci)
Commits changes to each repository. (By default, changes are pushed to the remote
repository too, when using distributed systems like git. If you don't like this
default, you can change it in your .mrconfig, or use record instead.)

The optional -m parameter allows specifying a commit message.

record
Records changes to the local repository, but does not push them to the remote
repository. Only supported for distributed version control systems.

The optional -m parameter allows specifying a commit message.

fetch
Fetches from each repository's remote repository, but does not update the working
copy. Only supported for some distributed version control systems.

push
Pushes committed local changes to the remote repository. A no-op for centralized
version control systems.

diff
Show a diff of uncommitted changes.

log Show the commit log.

grep pattern
Searches for a pattern in each repository using the grep subcommand. Uses ack-grep on
VCS that do not have their own.

run command [param ...]
Runs the specified command in each repository.

These commands are also available:

bootstrap src [directory]
Causes mr to retrieve the source "src" and use it as a .mrconfig file to checkout the
repositories listed in it, into the specified directory.

mr understands several types of sources:

URL for curl
"src" may be an URL understood by curl.

copy via ssh
To use scp to download, the "src" may have the form "ssh://[user@]host:file".

local file
You can retrieve the config file by other means and pass its path as "src".

standard input
If source "src" consists in a single dash "-", config file is read from standard
input.

The directory will be created if it does not exist. If no directory is specified, the
current directory will be used.

As a special case, if source "src" includes a repository named ".", that is checked
out into the top of the specified directory.

list (or ls)
List the repositories that mr will act on.

register
Register an existing repository in a mrconfig file. By default, the repository in the
current directory is registered, or you can specify a directory to register.

The mrconfig file that is modified is chosen by either the -c option, or by looking
for the closest known one at or in a parent of the current directory.

config
Adds, modifies, removes, or prints a value from a mrconfig file. The next parameter is
the name of the section the value is in. To add or modify values, use one or more
instances of "setting=value". Use "setting=" to remove a setting. Use just "setting"
to get the value of a that setting.

For example, to add (or edit) a repository in src/foo:

mr config src/foo checkout="svn co svn://example.com/foo/trunk foo"

To show the command that mr uses to update the repository in src/foo:

mr config src/foo update

To see the built-in library of shell functions contained in mr:

mr config DEFAULT lib

The mrconfig file that is used is chosen by either the -c option, or by looking for
the closest known one at or in a parent of the current directory.

offline
Advises mr that it is in offline mode. Any commands that fail in offline mode will be
remembered, and retried when mr is told it's online.

online
Advices mr that it is in online mode again. Commands that failed while in offline mode
will be re-run.

remember
Remember a command, to be run later when mr re-enters online mode. This implicitly
puts mr into offline mode. The command can be any regular mr command. This is useful
when you know that a command will fail due to being offline, and so don't want to run
it right now at all, but just remember to run it when you go back online.

help
Displays this help.

Actions can be abbreviated to any unambiguous substring, so "mr st" is equivalent to "mr
status", and "mr up" is equivalent to "mr update"

Additional parameters can be passed to most commands, and are passed on unchanged to the
underlying version control system. This is mostly useful if the repositories mr will act
on all use the same version control system.

OPTIONS

-d directory
--directory directory
Specifies the topmost directory that mr should work in. The default is the current
working directory.

-c mrconfig
--config mrconfig
Use the specified mrconfig file. The default is to use both ~/.mrconfig as well as
look for a .mrconfig file in the current directory, or in one of its parent
directories.

-f
--force
Force mr to act on repositories that would normally be skipped due to their
configuration.

--force-env
Force mr to execute even though potentially dangerous environment variables are set.

-v
--verbose
Be verbose.

-m
--minimal
Minimise output. If a command fails or there is any output then the usual output will
be shown.

-q
--quiet
Be quiet. This suppresses mr's usual output, as well as any output from commands that
are run (including stderr output). If a command fails, the output will be shown.

-k
--insecure
Accept untrusted SSL certificates when bootstrapping.

-s
--stats
Expand the statistics line displayed at the end to include information about exactly
which repositories failed and were skipped, if any.

-i
--interactive
Interactive mode. If a repository fails to be processed, a subshell will be started
which you can use to resolve or investigate the problem. Exit the subshell to continue
the mr run.

-n [number]
--no-recurse [number]
If no number if specified, just operate on the repository for the current directory,
do not recurse into deeper repositories.

If a number is specified, will recurse into repositories at most that many
subdirectories deep. For example, with -n 2 it would recurse into ./src/foo, but not
./src/packages/bar.

-j [number]
--jobs [number]
Run the specified number of jobs in parallel, or an unlimited number of jobs with no
number specified. This can greatly speed up operations such as updates. It is not
recommended for interactive operations.

Note that running more than 10 jobs at a time is likely to run afoul of ssh connection
limits. Running between 3 and 5 jobs at a time will yield a good speedup in updates
without loading the machine too much.

-t
--trust-all
Trust all mrconfig files even if they are not listed in ~/.mrtrust. Use with caution.

-p
--path
This obsolete flag is ignored.

MRCONFIG FILES

Here is an example .mrconfig file:

[src]
checkout = svn checkout svn://svn.example.com/src/trunk src
chain = true

[src/linux-2.6]
checkout = git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git &&
cd linux-2.6 &&
git checkout -b mybranch origin/master

The .mrconfig file uses a variant of the INI file format. Lines starting with "#" are
comments. Values can be continued to the following line by indenting the line with
whitespace.

The "DEFAULT" section allows setting default values for the sections that come after it.

The "ALIAS" section allows adding aliases for actions. Each setting is an alias, and its
value is the action to use.

All other sections add repositories. The section header specifies the directory where the
repository is located. This is relative to the directory that contains the mrconfig file,
but you can also choose to use absolute paths. (Note that you can use environment
variables in section names; they will be passed through the shell for expansion. For
example, "[$HOSTNAME]", or "[${HOSTNAME}foo]").

Within a section, each setting defines a shell command to run to handle a given action. mr
contains default handlers for "update", "status", "commit", and other standard actions.

Normally you only need to specify what to do for "checkout". Here you specify the command
to run in order to create a checkout of the repository. The command will be run in the
parent directory, and must create the repository's directory. So use "git clone", "svn
checkout", "bzr branch" or "bzr checkout" (for a bound branch), etc.

Note that these shell commands are run in a "set -e" shell environment, where any
additional parameters you pass are available in $@. All commands other than "checkout" are
run inside the repository, though not necessarily at the top of it.

The "MR_REPO" environment variable is set to the path to the top of the repository. (For
the "register" action, "MR_REPO" is instead set to the basename of the directory that
should be created when checking the repository out.)

The "MR_CONFIG" environment variable is set to the .mrconfig file that defines the repo
being acted on, or, if the repo is not yet in a config file, the .mrconfig file that
should be modified to register the repo.

The "MR_ACTION" environment variable is set to the command being run (update, checkout,
etc).

A few settings have special meanings:

skip
If "skip" is set and its command returns true, then mr will skip acting on that
repository. The command is passed the action name in $1.

Here are two examples. The first skips the repo unless mr is run by joey. The second
uses the hours_since function (included in mr's built-in library) to skip updating the
repo unless it's been at least 12 hours since the last update.

[mystuff]
checkout = ...
skip = test `whoami` != joey

[linux]
checkout = ...
skip = [ "$1" = update ] && ! hours_since "$1" 12

Another way to use skip is for a lazy checkout. This makes mr skip operating on a repo
unless it already exists. To enable the repo, you have to explicitly check it out
(using "mr --force -d foo checkout").

[foo]
checkout = ...
skip = lazy

order
The "order" setting can be used to override the default ordering of repositories. The
default order value is 10. Use smaller values to make repositories be processed
earlier, and larger values to make repositories be processed later.

Note that if a repository is located in a subdirectory of another repository, ordering
it to be processed earlier is not recommended.

chain
If "chain" is set and its command returns true, then mr will try to load a .mrconfig
file from the root of the repository.

include
If "include" is set, its command is ran, and should output additional mrconfig file
content. The content is included as if it were part of the including file.

Unlike everything else, "include" does not need to be placed within a section.

mr ships several libraries that can be included to add support for additional version
control type things (unison, git-svn, git-fake-bare, git-subtree). To include them
all, you could use:

include = cat /usr/share/mr/*

See the individual files for details.

deleted
If "deleted" is set and its command returns true, then mr will treat the repository as
deleted. It won't ever actually delete the repository, but it will warn if it sees the
repository's directory. This is useful when one mrconfig file is shared among
multiple machines, to keep track of and remember to delete old repositories.

lib The "lib" setting can contain some shell code that will be run before each command,
this can be a useful way to define shell functions for other commands to use.

Unlike most other settings, this can be specified multiple times, in which case the
chunks of shell code are accumulatively concatenated together.

fixups
If "fixups" is set, its command is run whenever a repository is checked out, or
updated. This provides an easy way to do things like permissions fixups, or other
tweaks to the repository content, whenever the repository is changed.

jobs
If "jobs" is set, run the specified number of jobs in parallel. This can greatly
speed up operations such as updates.

Note that running more than 10 jobs at a time is likely to run afoul of ssh connection
limits. Running between 3 and 5 jobs at a time will yield a good speedup in updates
without loading the machine too much.

VCS_action
When looking for a command to run for a given action, mr first looks for a setting
with the same name as the action. If that is not found, it looks for a setting named
"VCS_action" (substituting in the name of the version control system and the action).

Internally, mr has settings for "git_update", "svn_update", etc. To change the action
that is performed for a given version control system, you can override these VCS
specific actions. To add a new version control system, you can just add VCS specific
actions for it.

pre_ and post_
If "pre_action" is set, its command is run before mr performs the specified action.
Similarly, "post_action" commands are run after mr successfully performs the specified
action. For example, "pre_commit" is run before committing; "post_update" is run after
updating.

_append
Any setting can be suffixed with "_append", to add an additional value to the existing
value of the setting. In this way, actions can be constructed accumulatively.

VCS_test
The name of the version control system is itself determined by running each defined
"VCS_test" action, until one succeeds.

UNTRUSTED MRCONFIG FILES

Since mrconfig files can contain arbitrary shell commands, they can do anything. This
flexibility is good, but it also allows a malicious mrconfig file to delete your whole
home directory. Such a file might be contained inside a repository that your main
~/.mrconfig checks out. To avoid worries about evil commands in a mrconfig file, mr
defaults to reading all mrconfig files other than the main ~/.mrconfig in untrusted mode.
In untrusted mode, mrconfig files are limited to running only known safe commands (like
"git clone") in a carefully checked manner.

To configure mr to trust other mrconfig files, list them in ~/.mrtrust. One mrconfig file
should be listed per line. Either the full pathname should be listed, or the pathname can
start with ~/ to specify a file relative to your home directory.

OFFLINE LOG FILE

The ~/.mrlog file contains commands that mr has remembered to run later, due to being
offline. You can delete or edit this file to remove commands, or even to add other
commands for 'mr online' to run. If the file is present, mr assumes it is in offline mode.

EXTENSIONS

mr can be extended to support things such as unison and git-svn. Some files providing such
extensions are available in /usr/share/mr/. See the documentation in the files for details
about using them.

EXIT STATUS

mr returns nonzero if a command failed in any of the repositories.

Use mr online using onworks.net services