Official documentation here.

gicowa.py - GitHub Commit Watcher

GitHub's Watch feature doesn't send notifications when commits are pushed. This script aims to implement this feature and much more.

Call for maintainers: I don't use this project myself anymore but IFTTT instead (see below). If you're interested in taking over the maintenance of this project, or just helping, please let me know (e.g. by opening an issue).

Installation

$ sudo apt-get install sendmail
$ sudo pip install gicowa

Quick setup

Add the following line to your /etc/crontab:

0 * * * * root gicowa --persist --no-color --mailto [email protected] lastwatchedcommits MyGitHubUsername sincelast > /tmp/gicowa 2>&1

That's it. As long as your machine is running you'll get e-mails when something gets pushed on a repo you're watching.

NOTES:

• The e-mails are likely to be considered as spam until you mark one as non-spam in your e-mail client. Or use the --mailfrom option.

• If you're watching 15 repos or more, you probably want to use the --credentials option to make sure you don't hit the GitHub API rate limit.

Other/Advanced usage

gicowa is a generic command-line tool with which you can make much more that just implementing the use case depicted in the introduction. This section shows what it can.

List repos watched by a user

$ gicowa watchlist AurelienLourot
watchlist AurelienLourot
brandon-rhodes/uncommitted
AurelienLourot/crouton-emacs-conf
brillout/FasterWeb
AurelienLourot/github-commit-watcher

List last commits on a repo

$ gicowa lastrepocommits AurelienLourot/github-commit-watcher since 2015 07 05 09 12 00
lastrepocommits AurelienLourot/github-commit-watcher since 2015-07-05 09:12:00
Last commit pushed on 2015-07-05 10:48:58
Committed on 2015-07-05 10:46:27 - Aurelien Lourot - Minor cleanup.
Committed on 2015-07-05 09:39:01 - Aurelien Lourot - watchlist command implemented.
Committed on 2015-07-05 09:12:00 - Aurelien Lourot - argparse added.

NOTES:

• Keep in mind that a commit's committer timestamp isn't the time at which it gets pushed.

• The lines starting with Committed on list commits on the master branch only. Their timestamps are the committer timestamps.

• The line starting with Last commit pushed on shows the time at which a commit got pushed on the repository for the last time on any branch.

List last commits on repos watched by a user

$ gicowa lastwatchedcommits AurelienLourot since 2015 07 04 00 00 00
lastwatchedcommits AurelienLourot since 2015-07-04 00:00:00
AurelienLourot/crouton-emacs-conf - Last commit pushed on 2015-07-04 17:10:18
AurelienLourot/crouton-emacs-conf - Committed on 2015-07-04 17:08:48 - Aurelien Lourot - Support for Del key.
brillout/FasterWeb - Last commit pushed on 2015-07-04 16:40:54
brillout/FasterWeb - Committed on 2015-07-04 16:38:55 - brillout - add README
AurelienLourot/github-commit-watcher - Last commit pushed on 2015-07-05 10:48:58
AurelienLourot/github-commit-watcher - Committed on 2015-07-05 10:46:27 - Aurelien Lourot - Minor cleanup.
AurelienLourot/github-commit-watcher - Committed on 2015-07-05 09:39:01 - Aurelien Lourot - watchlist command implemented.
AurelienLourot/github-commit-watcher - Committed on 2015-07-05 09:12:00 - Aurelien Lourot - argparse added.
AurelienLourot/github-commit-watcher - Committed on 2015-07-05 09:07:14 - AurelienLourot - Initial commit

NOTE: if you're watching 15 repos or more, you probably want to use the --credentials option to make sure you don't hit the GitHub API rate limit.

List last commits since last run

Any listing command taking a since <timestamp> argument takes also a sincelast one. It will then use the time where that same command has been run for the last time on that machine with the option --persist. This option makes gicowa remember the last execution time of each command in ~/.gicowa.

$ gicowa --persist lastwatchedcommits AurelienLourot sincelast
lastwatchedcommits AurelienLourot since 2015-07-05 20:17:46
$ gicowa --persist lastwatchedcommits AurelienLourot sincelast
lastwatchedcommits AurelienLourot since 2015-07-05 20:25:33

Send output by e-mail

You can send the output of any command to yourself by e-mail:

$ gicowa --no-color --mailto [email protected] lastwatchedcommits AurelienLourot since 2015 07 04 00 00 00
lastwatchedcommits AurelienLourot since 2015-07-04 00:00:00
AurelienLourot/crouton-emacs-conf - Last commit pushed on 2015-07-04 17:10:18
AurelienLourot/crouton-emacs-conf - Committed on 2015-07-04 17:08:48 - Aurelien Lourot - Support for Del key.
brillout/FasterWeb - Last commit pushed on 2015-07-04 16:40:54
brillout/FasterWeb - Committed on 2015-07-04 16:38:55 - brillout - add README
AurelienLourot/github-commit-watcher - Last commit pushed on 2015-07-05 10:48:58
AurelienLourot/github-commit-watcher - Committed on 2015-07-05 10:46:27 - Aurelien Lourot - Minor cleanup.
AurelienLourot/github-commit-watcher - Committed on 2015-07-05 09:39:01 - Aurelien Lourot - watchlist command implemented.
AurelienLourot/github-commit-watcher - Committed on 2015-07-05 09:12:00 - Aurelien Lourot - argparse added.
AurelienLourot/github-commit-watcher - Committed on 2015-07-05 09:07:14 - AurelienLourot - Initial commit
Sent by e-mail to [email protected]

NOTES:

• You probably want to use --no-color because your e-mail client is likely not to render the bash color escape sequences properly.

• The e-mails are likely to be considered as spam until you mark one as non-spam in your e-mail client. Or use the --mailfrom option.

Changelog

1.2.3 (2015-10-17) to 1.2.5 (2015-10-19):

• Exception on non-ASCII characters fixed.

1.2.2 (2015-10-12):

• Machine name appended to e-mail content.

1.2.1 (2015-08-20):

• Documentation improved.

1.2.0 (2015-08-20):

• --version option implemented.

1.1.0 (2015-08-20):

• --errorto option implemented.

1.0.1 (2015-08-18) to 1.0.9 (2015-08-19):

• Documentation improved.

Contributors

• Aurelien Lourot
• cassiodoroVicinetti

Similar projects

The following projects provide similar functionalities:

• IFTTT, see this post.
• Zapier, however you have to create a "Zap" for each single project you want to watch. See this thread.
• HubNotify, however you will be notified only for new tags, not new commits.