This is a simple gtk based script to provide a visual status check of multiple git repo's. It was spawned from batchgit, a bash script to perform batch operations on multiple repo's. This indicator is designed to work with batchgit, but could with a small amount of setup work independently.

The basic idea is that it runs at startup and creates an icon. The icon gives an overview of all the listed repo's. When clicked, the icon lists all the repo's and their individual status. For example here is a screenshot of my system: Here we have one repo with commits to be pushed (an up-arrow) and so the main icon displays a warning symbol.

I have attempted to keep it as simple as possible so it should make sense without reading the behaviour section. If you have any questions or would like to see something done differently please let me know.

When first opened, all repo's in ~/.batchgit are checked against the remote. A label is assigned of the form ahead, diverged, behind, up-to-date or no-state is recorded for each repo. The menu is then set-up in the following way: The main menu icon displays some global information - either all OK, or action required; each individual menu item is assigned a symbol to reflect its current status. In addition each menu item is given a +n to indicate the n modified files.

The indicator then periodically checks all repo's with a frequency set by update_period (by default this is 100 seconds). On these periodic checks the remote is not tested. To update against the remote a manual update entry is provided in the menu itself.

• When run with the --no_remote flag, all remote checking is disabled. This # may be useful if you know you have no internet connection, or the remote checking is extremely slow.

• The default rcfile if .batchgitrc for compatibility with Max's batchgotrc. If you want to have something different then run with -r .nameofotherrc.

checkgit can be installed with pip install checkgit, but personally I use the following method. Alternatively if you want to install it from source, then clone the repo and

$ python setup.py install

Once installed, you'll have an executable checkgit on your PATH which when called will start the indicator. Note that to work properly checkgit requires a file ~/.batchgitrc listing the repos to check.

If you are using some variant of conda to handle your python environment, the following may be of use. Rather than installing checkgit as a conda package, I have found it is better to use the system python. The reason being that some of the dependencies have no easy conda installation. If you know how to fix this, please let me know.

First, clone to repo. Then, after moving into the cloned directory,

$ sudo python setup.py install

this installs the module in /usr/local/bin/checkgit. Now you can run it, but will probably recieve an error message regarding unmet dependencies, follow the instructions, always using sudo apt-get. Once complete, you should end up with a checkgit executable which is independant of your conda installation.

If you just want to see how this works then simply run

$ ./checkgit

from this directory. Note: this will require a .batchgitrc in your home dir. For example just create a file ~/.batchgitrc with the contents

/path/to/my/repo
/path/to/myother/repo

Then the quickstart will run

The setup for automatically starting checkgit will depend on which system you are using. Here are instructions for each known system:

We will add a .desktop file as described here. Simply put, there is a folder ~/.config/autostart/, which will contain several files with extensions .desktop. These are programs to run at startup, so to get checkgit to run at startup simply add a file named say checkgit.desktop containing:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Exec=checkgit
Hidden=false
NoDisplay=false
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
Name[en_GB]=checkgit
Name=checkgit
Comment[en_GB]=
Comment=

We can also add command line options to the Exec line, for example if you want to run without checking remotes.

Of course this idea is not original, or even as well implemented the alternative, so you may prefer to look at:

• UbikZ git-indicator: An indicator for the Unity panel which finds all repo's in home directory. This is very much a more developed version.

However, checkgit does not rely on the Unity panel, so it has that going for it..

There is also

• sickill git-dude: Not actively developed, but provides pop-up notifications for changes.

• Add support for changing .batchgitrc during runtime
• Remove path to home directory from directories
• Add hotkey support to open
• Integrate with batchgit so that you can pull etc. from the menu