How to Automagically Sync Directories Across Multiple Macs with Git & Launchd

In an effort to minimize my downtime when the funny noises this MacBook Pro is making finally amount to something – I’ve wired up a git repository to OS X’s native launchd service. The git repository hold all of my active projects – whether development projects with their own repos, research projects, consulting project. Everything.

Right now, there’s a Mac mini holding the shared repo with a MacBook Pro and a MacBook Air pushing and pulling to it.

1. Set up SSH keys the laptops and server (I like GitHub’s instructions)
2. Set up the repo on the server
   mkdir active-projects.git
cd active-projects.git
git --bare init
3. set up a repo on both client macs
   cd ~/Documents/Projects
git init
git add .
git commit -a -m "initial commit"
4. create the active-projects.sh backup script in your ~/Documents directory #!/bin/sh
DATE=`date -u`
cd /Users/YOUR-USER-NAME/Documents/Projects
git pull origin master
git add .
git commit -a -m "Active Project Sync - $DATE"
git push origin master
5. make active-projects.sh executable chmod +x project-backup.sh
6. Make the active-projects-backup.plist file for launchd
   
< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
< !DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>YOURNAME.rsync.backup</string>
<key>LowPriorityIO</key>
<true />
<key>Program</key>
<string>/Users/YOUR-USER-NAME/Documents/active-projects.sh</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>active-projects.sh</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true />
<key>QueueDirectories</key>
<array>
<string>/Users/YOUR-USER-NAME/Documents/Projects</string>
</array>
<key>WorkingDirectory</key>
<array>
<string>/Users/YOUR-USER-NAME/Documents/Projects</string>
</array>
</dict>

7. save the active-projects-backup.plist file to ~/Library/LaunchAgents and load it up launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/active-projects-backup.plist

8. Now, whenever a change is made in your ~/Documents/Projects – it will be automatically committed to the git repo and propagated to all computers connected to that repo. Like magic.

Thanks to culturedcode’s instructions for syncing Things with git & Launchd.