Usage#

The program has two phases: freeze and thaw. The command line program is used twice: first on the freeze on the source system and then thaw on the target machine.

First the distribution is created as a configuration file along with saved files in a distribution zip file. This distribution file is then copied to the target machine that is to be configured with the user’s home directory setup. The distribution also includes a bootstrap script that creates a Python virtual environment and then invokes the program to thaw the distributing.

Install the grsync program (pip install zensols.grsync).
Decide what you want to transfer to the target system (see configuration). This file explains each section of the file with inline comments and should be sufficient to munge your own.
Create the distribution, for example: grsync freeze -c grsync.yml -d ./dist.
Copy the distribution zip file to the host, for example: scp -r ./dist ~/<somehost>
Log into that host: slogin <host>
Call the bootstrapper: cd ./dist && ./bootstrap.sh /usr/bin ./dist python3.9 This attempts to create the Python virtual environment, install the program dependencies and thaw the distribution.

To do this step manually:

Install the grsync program (pip install zensols.grsync).
Thaw the distribution on the target: grsync thaw -d ./dist

Repository Information#

As you build your grsync.yml configuration file (see the configuration, it’s helpful to see what repositories it’s finding. This is you can do this with the repos and repoinfo, which show repositories, remotes, and indexed symbol links to or within the repositories.

Moving or Deleting Distributions#

A common usecase is migrate a distribution several times to a target host after the original host has changed. However, the thaw process does not clobber file system objects that already exist, which implies that for each file set change and thaw the target host’s files won’t update.

Only files specified in the configuration file are moved to a directory with the same directory structure by moving files. If a directory is specified, the directory itself is moved. If a file is specified for which there is no directory in the target, the directory is created.

After everything is moved, a process called directory reduction occurs by which empty directories are removed. This is an optional step given to the move action.

Because the action works with a distribution file (ideally the original) you must specify where to find the dist.zip. In situations where you’ve already deleted the original distribution zip, you’ll have to create a new distribution by freezing what you have. For this reason it is recommended that you always include the original grsync.yml configuration file (see the configuration) in your distribution so it migrates along with each of your freeze/thaw iterations.

Utility Git Script#

The repoutil.py script iterates through all of your configured repositories and performs an action on it, such as using GNU make to clean, getting status, pulling etc. It also provides an example of how to use the tool’s programmatic API and how it can increase your productivity by extending the library.

It can also be used on the command line. For example, to push all uncommitted changes, for remote github:

for i in `repoutil uncommitted -r github` ; do
    echo "pushing repository at $i"
	( cd $i ; git push github )
done

The program needs the plac package: pip3 install plac.

API#

The package provides an easy to use convenient way to access your configuration, which includes your discovered Git repositories. The following is a shortened version of the dirty repository example that lists all dirty (containing un-tracked or modified files) repositories:

>>> from zensols.grsync import ApplicationFactory
>>> app = ApplicationFactory.create_harness().get_instance('repos')
>>> discoverer = app.dist_mng.discoverer
>>> repo_specs = discoverer.discover(False)['repo_specs']
>>> for spec in filter(lambda rs: rs.repo.is_dirty(), repo_specs): print(spec.path)
/some/path/to/a/git/repo
...