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.
I set that up, once. It went poorly for me. Git behaves much better, for me, when used thoughtfully and manually.
What I now do instead, is work on certain projects on an SSH accessible host. This gives the same benefits of having my last state easily accesses, without causing noise in my development tools such as git.
If working on Linux, combine SSH with tmux (and the attach/detach commands) and you have a very solid workflow. Learning tmux has been one of the best tools of the year for me.