Installation & Setup

Installation

With Homebrew

TIP

Recommended

git-activity is available on Homebrew. Run

brew install olets/tap/git-activity

and follow the post-install instructions logged to the terminal.

brew upgrade will upgrade you to the latest version, even if it's a major version change.

Want to stay on this major version until you choose to upgrade to the next? When installing git-activity with Homebrew for the first time, run

brew install olets/tap/git-activity@1

If you've already installed olets/tap/git-activity with Homebrew, you can switch to the v6 formula by running

brew uninstall --force git-activity && brew install olets/tap/git-activity@6

With a shell plugin manager

Zsh

You can install git-activity with a shell plugin manager, including those built into frameworks such as Oh-My-Zsh (OMZ) and prezto. Each has their own way of doing things. Read your package manager's documentation or the zsh plugin manager plugin installation procedures gist.

Want to stay on this major version until you choose to upgrade to the next? Use your package manager's convention for specifying the branch v1.

After adding the plugin to the manager, it will be available in all new terminals. To use it in an already-open terminal, restart your shell in that terminal:

exec zsh

Other shells

Users of shells other than zsh may be able to install git-activity as a plugin. Check your plugin manager's documentation for support for installing commands.

Manual

1. Either

   • download the archive of the release of your choice from https://github.com/olets/git-activity/releases and expand it (ensures you have the latest official release),

   • or clone a single branch:

     git clone https://github.com/olets/git-activity --recurse-submodules --single-branch --branch <branch> --depth 1

     Replace <branch> with a branch name. Good options are main (for the latest stable release), next (for the latest release, even if it isn't stable), or v6 (for releases in this major version).

2. Put the file git-activity in a directory in your PATH.

Set up automatic recording

INFO

This is optional, but recommended.

Automated

TIP

Recommended

WARNING

Does not check to see if you've already run the install. If you notice duplicative entries in your git-activity log, check your global init.templatedir hooks, and the .git hooks in any repos you've run git init in.

To configure Git to record all git commits, git commit --amends, git merges, git pushes, git rebases, and most git checkout -b/git switch -c, run

git activity install [--global]

If run from a Git repo root, that will add Git hooks. If a hook file already exists, the command is appended to it.

If --global is passed, hooks are added to Git's init.templatedir; from now on, running git init for the first time in any directory will add the hooks to the new repo.

(If init.templatedir is not already configured, it will be set to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/.config/git-templates if XDG_CONFIG_HOME is defined, or to $HOME/.config/git-templates if XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not defined. If a hook file already exists, the command is appended to it.)

git activity install sets up these hooks to run these commands:

Hook	Command
post-checkout	git activity record-post-checkout "$@"
post-commit	git activity record commit
post-merge	git activity record merge
post-rewrite	git activity record rewrite
pre-push	git activity record push

Manual

TIP

If you want to include the hooks in version control, consider a Git hook manager. For example, Husky, pre-commit, or simple-git-hooks.

In a Git repo's .git directory, or in your global Git init.templatedir

1. Create a hooks directory, if it doesn't already exist.

2. In the hooks directory, create a file named after a Git hook (read the githooks documentation for details).

3. Make the file executable: run chmod +x path/to/the/file/you/created.

4. Add a git-activity command to the file.

Good starting points are the hooks defined by git activity install. But you can be as complex as you want. Git's hooks and your shell scripting skill are the limit.