filehistory

Basic automated file-history-tracker for *nix

Single shell script, invoked as 'filehistory [filenames]'. Designed for use making WIP animations of artwork.

When you want to stop tracking the files for the moment, simply terminate it by pressing Ctrl+C.

Requires:

• inotifywait ('inotify-tools' package)
• find
• zenity

Optional:

• notify-send (libnotify package)

In detail:

Watches files using inotifywait.

• When a new version is saved, it is assigned a revision number and stored in FILENAME.hist/REVISION-MD5HASH.EXT (example: revision 1 of foo.png might be stored as 000001-d6c3121c4c62524a23c66649be247df3.png)
• The user is prompted using zenity to describe their changes, and this is logged to FILENAME.hist/log.txt.
• If the user enters an empty message or cancels, the revision is not stored in history.

In the case of images, this system means it is easy to browse through your history visually with an ordinary image viewer.

You can also edit history via normal filesystem operations.