NAME¶
mr - a Multiple Repository management tool
SYNOPSIS¶
mr [options] checkout
mr [options] update
mr [options] status
mr [options] commit [-m "message"]
mr [options] record [-m "message"]
mr [options] push
mr [options] diff
mr [options] log
mr [options] run command [param ...]
mr [options] bootstrap url [directory]
mr [options] register [repository]
mr [options] config section ["parameter=[value]" ...]
mr [options] action [params ...]
mr [options] [online|offline]
mr [options] remember action [params ...]
DESCRIPTION¶
mr is a Multiple Repository management tool. 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- run command [param ...]
- Runs the specified command in each repository.
These commands are also available:
- bootstrap url [directory]
- Causes mr to download the url, and use it as a .mrconfig
file to checkout the repositories listed in it, into the specified
directory.
The directory will be created if it does not exist. If no directory is
specified, the current directory will be used.
If the .mrconfig file 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
"parameter=value". Use "parameter=" to remove a
parameter. Use just "parameter" to get the value of a parameter.
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.
- -v
- --verbose
- Be verbose.
- -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 parameter
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 parameter 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 parameters have special meanings:
- skip
- If the "skip" parameter 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" parameter 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 the "chain" parameter is set and its command
returns true, then mr will try to load a .mrconfig file from
the root of the repository.
- include
- If the "include" parameter 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 all other parameters, this parameter 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 the "deleted" parameter 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" parameter can specify 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 parameters, this can be specified multiple times, in which
case the chunks of shell code are accumulatively concatenated
together.
- fixups
- If the "fixups" parameter 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.
- VCS_action
- When looking for a command to run for a given action, mr
first looks for a parameter with the same name as the action. If that is
not found, it looks for a parameter 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 a "pre_action" parameter is set, its command
is run before mr performs the specified action. Similarly,
"post_action" parameters 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 parameter can be suffixed with "_append", to
add an additional value to the existing value of the parameter. 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.
AUTHOR¶
Copyright 2007-2011 Joey Hess <joey@kitenet.net>
Licensed under the GNU GPL version 2 or higher.
http://kitenet.net/~joey/code/mr/