auto-update-git

auto-update-git is a bash script to automatically update a git repository to match the current state of a given remote git repository. It should handle any modification to the local repository: new commits, file modifications, a changed branch, and untracked files. It does not require hard-coding the HEAD branch of the remote repository, and should continue working if the remote repository's HEAD branch changes.

It can also do a "shallow" fetch from the remote repository, if you would like to only keep the last N commits on disk.

Usage

cd <repository>
auto-update-git [--depth=<depth>] <remote-url>

How it works

The core algorithm is:

1. Ensure that the git repository has a remote called origin pointing at <remote-url>.
2. Set the HEAD of the remote automatically, thus discarding any local changes to the remote HEAD, or picking up a new remote HEAD.
3. Determine which branch the remote HEAD points to.
4. Fetch the branch the remote HEAD points to.
5. Forcibly checkout the branch the remote HEAD points to, potentially changing the current branch and overwriting any changes to a local branch of the same name.
6. Delete any branches other than the branch the remote HEAD points to.
7. Clean any untracked files.

Testing

There are crude (but effective) tests in the tests/ directory, you may execute them individually, for example:

./tests/test-01.sh