Verti - Versioned Artifacts

Usecase

Artifacts = notes, scratch code, documents etc. that are created as part of coding, research, learning etc.

Problem with the classic .gitignore

• you don't get versioning for artifacts
• if you switch branches and the .gitignore changes, you need to keep on updating it on every branch to exclude artifacts
• footprint of "non project related" files in repo

There are ways around like using a submodule or linking to some folder outside but all of those leave reference commited in the repo.

How it works?

verti maintains a git like snapshot de-duplicated snapshot at ~/.verti per repo, post every commit. The files are ignored via addition to .git/info/exclude which verti manages for you, this leaves no references to the files themselves in the repo itself.

Install

• AUR: yay -S verti

• macOS: brew install ruinivist/tap/verti

• Prebuilt: download a Linux/macOS tarball from GitHub Releases and put verti on your PATH.

• Source:

  git clone https://github.com/ruinivist/verti.git
  cd verti
  make build

  Add ./build/verti to your PATH.

How to use?

Run inside a git repo:

verti init
verti add notes.md
verti add scratch/
git commit -m "work"

This'll ignore notes.md and anything under scratch/ folder but will keep versioning them aside.

Commands:

verti init             # create config and install hooks
verti add <path>       # track an artifact
verti rm <path>        # stop tracking an artifact
verti sync             # for restoring after a rollback ( this isn't automatically in case you want to don't rollback artifacts )
verti orphans          # in case a restore overwrites existing artifacts, an oprhan entrey is maintained
verti orphans <number> # restore orphaned snapshot by selecting item from `verti orphan`

What lives where

• Config lives at .git/verti.toml.
• Snapshots live under ~/.verti.
• Artifacts are ignored through .git/info/exclude.