ChatGPT: The Key to Efficient Software Development Process

One of the important elements of efficient software development is to keep boring tasks at bay.

In this post, I describe the process of creating a bash script for keeping local git repositories up to date with the remote repositories with a help of ChatGPT.

My initial request looked like this:

write a bash script which goes to every subfolder and if it contains git repo checks out master branch and pulls. it should also print out if it's been done successfully or failed for every folder

Chat gave me a decent answer with comments for every command

First attempt

#!/bin/bash

# Iterate over all subdirectories
for d in */ ; do
    # Enter the subdirectory
    cd "$d"

    # Check if it is a git repository
    if git rev-parse --git-dir > /dev/null 2>&1; then
        # Check out the master branch
        git checkout master

        # Pull the latest changes
        if git pull; then
            # Print success message
            echo "Successfully updated $d"
        else
            # Print error message
            echo "Failed to update $d"
        fi
    fi

    # Return to the parent directory
    cd ..
done

After a whole bunch of clarification which includes:

before git pull let’s check if there are changes and print it out
not changes to be pulled, but rather working directory changes
check for working directory changes first and then checkout and pull

Intermediate result

#!/bin/bash

# Iterate over all subdirectories
for d in */ ; do
    # Enter the subdirectory
    cd "$d"

    # Check if it is a git repository
    if git rev-parse --git-dir > /dev/null 2>&1; then
        # Check if there are any changes in the working directory
        if git diff-index --quiet HEAD; then
            # No changes, so check out the master branch
            git checkout master

            # Pull the latest changes
            if git pull; then
                # Print success message
                echo "Successfully updated $d"
            else
                # Print error message
                echo "Failed to update $d"
            fi
        else
            # Changes in the working directory, so don't pull
            echo "Working directory changes in $d, skipping pull"
        fi
    fi

    # Return to the parent directory
    cd ..
done

And the final touch: let’s do some output formatting and coloring

modify the output: success - green color "folder name, master branch", working directory changes - yellow color text "folder name, branch name, number of files with changes", failed for any other reason - red color text "folder, branch name"

Final result

#!/bin/bash

# Function to print the branch name in green
print_green() {
    printf "\033[32m%s\033[0m\n" "$1"
}

# Function to print the branch name in yellow
print_yellow() {
    printf "\033[33m%s\033[0m\n" "$1"
}

# Function to print the branch name in red
print_red() {
    printf "\033[31m%s\033[0m\n" "$1"
}

# Iterate over all subdirectories
for d in */ ; do
    # Enter the subdirectory
    cd "$d"

    # Check if it is a git repository
    if git rev-parse --git-dir > /dev/null 2>&1; then
        # Get the current branch name
        branch=$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)

        # Check if there are any changes in the working directory
        if git diff-index --quiet HEAD; then
            # No changes, so check out the master branch if not already on it
            if [ "$branch" != "master" ]; then
                git checkout master > /dev/null
            fi
            # Pull the latest changes
            if git pull > /dev/null; then
                # Print success message in green
                print_green "Successfully updated $d ($branch)"
            else
                # Print error message in red
                print_red "Failed to update $d ($branch)"
            fi
        else
            # Changes in the working directory, so don't pull
            # Get the number of changed files
            num_changes=$(git diff --name-only | wc -l)
            # Print warning message in yellow
            print_yellow "Working directory changes in $d ($branch, $num_changes file(s) changed)"
        fi
    fi

    # Return to the parent directory
    cd ..
done

The result of the script execution looks like the following

The repository names and branches are redacted.

GitHub

ChatGPT: The Key to a More Efficient Software Development Process