Making git auto-commit

Question

I\'d like to use git to record all the changes to a file.

Is there a way I can turn git \'commit\' on to automatically happen every time a file is updated - so ther

Answer 1

The earlier inotifywait answer is great, but it isn't quite a complete solution. As written, it is a one shot commit for a one time change in a file. It does not work for the common case where editing a file creates a new inode with the original name. inotifywait -m apparently follows files by inode, not by name. Also, after the file has changed, it is not staged for git commit without git add or git commit -a. Making some adjustments, here is what I am using on Debian to track all changes to my calendar file:

/etc/rc.local:

su -c /home//bin/gitwait -l 

/home//bin/gitwait:

#!/bin/bash
#
# gitwait - watch file and git commit all changes as they happen
#

while true; do

  inotifywait -qq -e CLOSE_WRITE ~/.calendar/calendar

  cd ~/.calendar; git commit -a -m 'autocommit on change'

done

This could be generalized to wait on a list of files and/or directories, and the corresponding inotifywait processes, and restart each inotifywait as a file is changed.