Automating work folder backups with git

I am a lazy person. And backing something up is a really tedious chore. Source code isn’t so bad. Whenever I work on and modify it, I can just push it to a git remote server. But backing up the work folder I keep for tasks and management is just way too tedious. So I decided to automate it. The steps go like this:

1. Create a script that commits the changes in the work folder using git.
2. Make the script run as a batch job once a day.

I’ve put together the setup methods for Windows 7 and Windows 10 respectively.

1. Windows7

Create the shell script below

#! /bin/bash
cd /d/work # the folder I want to back up
git status
git add .
git commit -m $(date +"%Y%m%d_%T")
git push -u origin master

and register it in Task Scheduler.

2. Windows10

Thanks to the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), SSH Key management has become somewhat more complicated. After creating an SSH Key by referring to the article on this blog, register the batch script below in Task Scheduler (no shell script! bat).

@echo off
for /f "tokens=2 delims==" %%a in ('wmic OS Get localdatetime /value') do set "dt=%%a"
set "YY=%dt:~2,2%" & set "YYYY=%dt:~0,4%" & set "MM=%dt:~4,2%" & set "DD=%dt:~6,2%"
set "HH=%dt:~8,2%" & set "Min=%dt:~10,2%" & set "Sec=%dt:~12,2%"
set "datestamp=%YYYY%%MM%%DD%" & set "timestamp=%HH%%Min%%Sec%"
set "fullstamp=%YYYY%-%MM%-%DD%_%HH%-%Min%-%Sec%"

REM d:\work is the folder to back up
d:
cd work
git add .
git commit -m "%fullstamp%"
git push -u origin master 

With this, I get to save 1 minute of my life every day.

Tip: When you open an MS Office document file, a temporary file starting with ~$ gets created, and because of this file, commits fail. So let’s add it to gitignore. You can set it up like this.

~$*

Done!

Reference: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11037831/filename-timestamp-in-windows-cmd-batch-script/11037921