This is a concept and implementation for a git commit-based social network, inspired by Twitter. An account is represented by a git repository. Posts are made by creating an empty commit where the message is the content of the post. Following someone is done by cloning their repository. Additional assets can be attached to a post by adding files to the commit.

Before anything, I recommend you create a directory in which you'll put your repo-account, as well as the repo-account of every person you follow. This will make it easier to list all your followees' posts (when, uh, I figure out a way to do so!). Even better: you can clone this repository and use it as the directory containing your repo-account and followees. That way, this README is always just one cd .. away!

git clone git@github.com:xlambein/twit-commit.git
cd twit-commit

To create a repo-account, simply create a subdirectory in twit-commit and initialize a git repository there. I recommend you give this repository a name like _me, instead of your own (user)name. That way it'll be easier to find among all your followees.

mkdir _me
cd _me
git init

In addition, you should synchronize your repo-account somewhere (e.g., GitHub, Git Lab, or host it yourself), so that people can follow you.

Posts are represented by commits. Normal commits require you to have at least one file change, but the --allow-empty flag can bypass this restriction.

cd into your repo-account and make a new post with the following:

git commit --allow-empty -m "[post content]"
git push

Of course, since we're using the command line, we can do fancier things, like cat a file into a post:

cat my_post.txt | xargs -0 git commit --allow-empty -m

That being said, I'd recommend you keep the length of a commit message relatively short, e.g., in the order of 100-200 characters. For long-form content, or to include things like images, consider adding files to the commit.

Following someone is as simple as cloning their repo-account:

cd twit-commit
git clone [url-of-repo-account]

To get and display a person's posts, simply pull and log in their repo-account:

cd twit-commit/[repo-account]
git pull  # or `git fetch`, see "Listing New Posts Only"
git log

The default output works well, but contains a lot of unnecessary information, like the commit hash, the HEAD and master markers, the author's e-mail address, etc. Thankfully, git log comes with a wide variety of formatting options that will help you display posts in friendlier ways. Here are a few examples:

• Single-line listing of posts, with summary of files, human-friendly dates and colors:

  $ git log --pretty=format:"%Cblue%ad %Cgreen%aN %Creset%s" --date=human --compact-summary
  3 minutes ago Marty McFly I guess you guys aren't ready for that yet...
  5 minutes ago Marty McFly All right. This is an oldie, but, uh... well, it's an oldie where I come from. I attached the lyrics to this post.
   johnny_b_goode.txt (new) | 12 ++++++++++++
   1 file changed, 12 insertions(+)
  
  7 minutes ago Marty McFly @docbrown, you don't just walk into a store and buy... plutonium. Did you rip that off?
  8 minutes ago Marty McFly Damn, I'm late for school!

• Multiple-lines, with summary of files, single-line header, short commit hash, human-friendly dates and colors:

  $ git log --pretty=format:"%C(yellow)%h %Cgreen%aN%Creset (%Cblue%ad%Creset)%n%Creset%n%w(0,4,4)%B" --date=human --compact-summary
  83bd374 Marty McFly (3 minutes ago)
  
      I guess you guys aren't ready for that yet...
  
      But your kids are gonna love it.
  
  85af1b1 Marty McFly (5 minutes ago)
  
      All right. This is an oldie, but, uh... well, it's an oldie where I come from.
      I attached the lyrics to this post.
  
   johnny_b_goode.txt (new) | 12 ++++++++++++
   1 file changed, 12 insertions(+)
  
  b0881e6 Marty McFly (7 minutes ago)
  
      @docbrown, you don't just walk into a store and buy... plutonium. Did you rip that off?
  
  74d3661 Marty McFly (8 minutes ago)
  
      Damn, I'm late for school!

The option --compact-summary is one of the few options git log offers to display files that were changed in a specific commit. For a shorter output, you may want to try --name-only.

You can change the format of dates to your liking by changing the --date= option. A few interesting values are:

• rfc gives you RFC 2822-formatted dates, typically found in e-mails, such as Sun, 14 Jul 2019 14:49:29 +0200.
• human produces a human-friendly output, giving relative time or day of the week for recent commits, showing the timezone if it doesn't match the local one, etc.
• short only outputs the date, in YYYY-MM-DD format.

For more information about formatting, check the git-log man pages (sections Commit Formatting and PRETTY FORMATS):

man git-log

The HEAD pointer can be used to remember which posts you already read, and which posts are new. When synchronizing another repo-account, instead of using git pull, try using git fetch, which pulls the changes without merging and moving HEAD. Then, you can list only new posts with the following:

git log HEAD..origin/master

To display additional posts (e.g., to give some context), use HEAD~N..origin/master where N is the number of older commits to show (starting from HEAD itself).

Mark all new commits as read with:

git merge

You can also decide to set your HEAD pointer to a specific commit hash, e.g., if you haven't yet caught up with everything.

You can host more than one blog on a single repo-account by creating branches. Use git checkout to switch from one blog to another, or clone the repository twice to make it less cumbersome :-)

In order to make some tasks easier, I made a command-line tool called twit, which you'll find in this repository.

A typical twit workflow would be:

# Follow someone
twit clone <some repo-account> <username of the person>

# List their twit-commits
twit log <username>

# Some time has passed...

# List their new twit-commits
twit log <username> --new

# Mark new twit-commits as read
twit merge <username>

# Create my own account
twit init

# Post a twit-commit myself
twit commit "Hello World!"

# Post a twit-commit with files
twit add ~/Documents/novel/chapter05.md
twit commit "Check out the new chapter of my novel (attached)"

Use twit without a command to display the help, and twit help <command> to display the help for a specific command.

Here are a bunch of other ideas to improve this project:

• Use commit hooks to maintain an up-to-date RSS feed of your posts.
• Find a way to list posts from multiple repo-accounts in chronological order

If you have any suggestion for improvements, I'd be very happy to hear them! Get in touch with me at: xlambein [AT] gmail [DOT] com.

You can also follow my twit-commits here: https://github.com/xlambein/commits

Sometimes an idea pops in my brain and I just.....need....to do it......