Hi programmers,

I work from two computers: a desktop and laptop. I often interrupt my work on one computer and continue on the other, where I don’t have access to uncommitted progress on the first computer. Frustrating!

Potential solution: using git to auto save progress.

I’m posting this to get feedback. Maybe I’m missing something and this is over complicated?

Here is how it could work:

Creating and managing the separate branch

Alias git commands (such as git checkout), such that I am always on a branch called “[branch]-autosave” where [branch] is the branch I intend to be on, and the autosave branch always branches from it. If the branch doesn’t exist, it is always created.

handling commits

Whenever I commit, the auto save branch would be squashed and merged with the underlying branch.

autosave functionality

I use neovim as my editor, but this could work for other editors.

I will write an editor hook that will always pull the latest from the autosave branch before opening a file.

Another hook will always commit and push to origin upon the file being saved from the editor.

This way, when I get on any of my devices, it will sync the changes pushed from the other device automatically.

Please share your thoughts.

  • Strykker@programming.dev
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    2 months ago

    Your git solution still has all of these issues, as you need the git server to be alive, for number 3 use something like rsync so you keep a local copy that is backed up if you are concerned about the file share being offline.

    • matcha_addictOP
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      2 months ago

      I don’t need the client computers to be alive, only the central server (which could be github.com for example, so not even a server I manage).