.\" -*- nroff -*-
.TH FLASHBAKE 1 "June 30, 2010"
.SH NAME
flashbake \- automated snapshots with git
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B flashbake
[options] <project_dir> [quiet_min]
.SH DESCRIPTION
\fBflashbake\fP is a tool which watches files and automatically checks them
in to a git repository. The commit lines can be customised. It is meant to
be run from a cron job (see
.IR crontab (5)
). Thus it simplifies life for
user by taking off the burden of manually committing changes and
allowing one to focus on the work.
.PP
\fBquiet_min\fP is a parameter to flashbake which tells it to only commit
changes to files in the project that have not been changed in the last
quiet_min minutes. Setting this to 0 or omitting this disables the quiet
period and flashbake  immediately commits all changes when run.
.PP
One of the nice features of flashbake is its generation of automatic commit
messages using its plugin system. flashbake's plugins can pull in data from
various sources including your microblogging feeds, uptime, weather etc.
and use that to generate the commit message.
.PP
If you are new to flashbake, check out the \fBCONFIGURATION\fP and
\fBUSAGE\fP sections below for more information; you can also check the
wiki (address given in \fBSEE ALSO\fP).
.SH OPTIONS
flashbake follows the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options
starting with two dashes (`\-'). A summary of options is included below. For
a complete description, see the online documentation.
.TP
.B \-\-version
show version number and exit
.TP
\fB\-h\fR, \fB\-\-help\fR
show summary of options.
.TP
\fB\-c\fR, \fB\-\-context\fR
just generate and show the commit message, don't check for changes. 
.TP
\fB\-v\fR, \fB\-\-verbose\fR
include debug information in the output, useful for reporting problems.
.TP
\fB\-q\fR, \fB\-\-quiet\fR
disable all output except errors
.TP
\fB\-d\fR, \fB\-\-dryrun\fR
do not change anything, just show what flashbake would do if executed
without the \-d option (dry run).
.TP
\fB\-p\fR PLUGIN_DIR, \fB\-\-plugins\fR=PLUGIN_DIR
specify an additional location for plugins
.TP
\fB\-r\fR, \fB\-\-purge\fR
purge any files that have been deleted from source control
.SH CONFIGURATION
flashbake is quite easy to setup and does not require knowledge of git
internals. As flashbake requires a git repository, you must create a git
repository for the folder you wish to track by cd'ing into the folder and
typing \fBgit init\fP (if you have not done so already).
.PP
flashbake configuration is done through a \fB.flashbake\fP file in the
project directory. Global options for flashbake can be specified in
\fB~/.flashbake/config\fP where ~ refers to the home directory (like
/home/joe on Linux or /Users/joe on Mac OS X). If the ~/.flashbake/config
file is present then it will get read first, followed by the project
specific version.
.PP
flashbake tracks changes to only specific files which it terms as \fBhot
files\fP. You have to specify these hot file names in the \fB.flashbake\fP
file which should be created in the project directory. Wildcards which are
used in the shell can be used, like ? for matching a single character, *
for matching any number of characters and [] for ranges of characters
([0\-9] would match a single digit from 0 to 9 in a filename).
.SH EXAMPLE
Here follows an example .flashbake file (taken from the wiki), with
explanatory comments.

.nf
# this enables the feed plugin
plugins:flashbake.plugins.feed:Feed
# these three lines are used by the feed plugin, see the Plugins page for
# more info
feed_url:http://www.mysite.com/feed
# author is optional
feed_author:Joe Random
# limit is optional, defaults to 5 if unused
feed_limit:3

# this line is optional, omit it to disable email
notice_to:joe@mysite.com
# alternately, if you set up an ssh tunnel, you can set this and send
# through
# the tunnel
#smtp_port:5002

# hot files
todo.txt
my_novel.txt
extra/character_notes.txt
extra/story_bible.txt
.fi

Any line beginning with # is a comment, of course. The notice_to: specifies
an email address to mail when flashbake encounters some problems with a hot
file. This functionality is not mandatory and you can comment notice_to:
out to disable it.
.SH USAGE
This section shows some typical usage patterns of flashbake.
.PP
If you run
.PP
.nf
flashbake \-c ~/my_novel
.fi
.PP
flashbake will not commit any changes, rather it will show you the commit
message it would generate if run normally. This is useful for checking that
you’ve entered the options in the control file correctly and checking the
commit message content.
.PP
Running
.PP
.nf
flashbake \-d ~/my_novel
.fi
.PP
would make flashbake do a dry run, and it will do everything except
actually updating the repository.
.PP
One of the most common ways to run flashbake is to run it under cron for
example, putting this in your
.IR crontab (5)
.nf
*/15 * * * * flashbake ~/my_novel 5 > /dev/null
.fi
would make flashbake run every fifteen minutes, checking in changes to the
hot files in the ~/my_novel directory which have not been changed in the
last five minutes.
.SH BUGS
The bug tracker is at http://github.com/commandline/flashbake/issues.
If you are experiencing problems, try out a newer version first, if
available.
.SH SEE ALSO
A more extensive documentation for flashbake can be found at its wiki site
at:
http://wiki.github.com/commandline/flashbake/.
.PP
A list of available plugins with the accompanying documentation can be
found at:
http://wiki.github.com/commandline/flashbake/plugins
.SH AUTHOR
Written by Thomas Gideon.
.PP
This manual page was written by Abhishek Dasgupta <abhidg@gmail.com>, for
the Debian project (but may be used by others).