Hello, I've written a little tool that has saved me some typing and trouble. It's called vc-dwim, as in "do what I mean", and helps manage version- controlled working directories.
You can get a tarball here: http://et.redhat.com/~meyering/vc-dwim-0.2.tar.gz Or check out the latest: hg clone http://hg.et.redhat.com/hg/emd/applications/vc-dwim If you know of a similar tool, or a nice, VC-agnostic perl module, please let me know. Feedback welcome, Jim Here's the contents of its README file: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- vc-dwim is a version-control-agnostic ChangeLog diff and commit tool. It is useful if you like to maintain a ChangeLog file describing the changes you make to version-controlled files. vc-dwim works with the following version control systems: git, mercurial, svn, and cvs. It should be easy to add support for more. What can it do? =============== vc-dwim can save you from making some small mistakes when using version control programs from the command line. For example, if you have unsaved changes in an editor buffer and use vc-dwim to print diffs or to commit changes involving that file, it will detect the problem, tell you about it, and fail. This works as long as you use Emacs or Vim. Another common error you can avoid with this tool is the one where you create a new file, add its name to Makefiles, etc., mention the addition in a ChangeLog, but forget to e.g., "git add" (or "hg add", etc.) the file to the version control system. vc-dwim detects this discrepancy and fails with a diagnostic explaining the probable situation. You might also have simply mistyped the file name in the ChangeLog. Also, vc-dwim makes it a little easier/safer to commit a strict subset of the modified files in a working directory. But no one ever does *that*. How does this author use vc-dwim? ================================= Print diffs of arbitrary files: ------------------------------ I have an alias to show all or specified diffs: cv='vc-dwim --diff' I use that when I want to see diffs of a specified file, regardless of whether I have written new ChangeLog entries for it. It works the same for cvs, git, hg, svn repositories, as long as all you want are the difference between your local copy and the checked out version. Print diffs of files with new ChangeLog entries: ----------------------------------------------- Often, I have made local changes to a file, and I have also added at least one corresponding entry in a ChangeLog file. Then, I use "vc-dwim ChangeLog" to print the diffs for which there are ChangeLog entries, warning about the potential problems mentioned above (editor temporaries that can imply there are unsaved changes, and files listed in ChangeLog, but not "cvs add"ed). If your changes affect files covered by more than one ChangeLog, you might use "vc-dwim ChangeLog lib/ChangeLog", or more concisely, "vc-dwim {,lib/}ChangeLog". Commit changes to files with new ChangeLog entries: -------------------------------------------------- Use "vc-dwim --commit ChangeLog" or "vc-dwim --commit ChangeLog lib/ChangeLog src/ChangeLog" to commit the changes you would see without the --commit option. Assuming I have completed a change and have documented everything in one or more ChangeLog file, I run "vc-dwim --commit ChangeLog" to commit that ChangeLog file and the files "implied" by the new ChangeLog lines. The commit log message is derived from the added ChangeLog lines. With a single ChangeLog file, the log message is nearly identical to the list of added lines. One leading TAB is removed and any "date user-name <email>" lines are elided. When there are two or more ChangeLog files, the log message includes a line for each indicating the affected directory. For example: [ChangeLog] * some-file-in-top-level-dir: ... [lib/ChangeLog] * lib.c: ... [m4/ChangeLog] * foo.m4: ...
