microplane

A CLI tool to make git changes across many repos, especially useful with Microservices. You can learn more about microplane in this introductory blogpost.

"the lemon is Git{Hub,Lab}"

Setup

Here are several ways to install microplane:

• Pre-built release - You can download a pre-built version of Microplane from the Github releases.
• Compile it yourself - Run go get github.com/clever/microplane/cmd. In this case the binary will be installed to $GOPATH/bin/microplane. Alternately, you can follow the steps under "Development", below.
• Homebrew - brew install microplane. The latest homebrew formula is here

Usage

GitHub setup

The GITHUB_API_TOKEN environment variable must be set for Github. This should be a GitHub Token with repo scope.

GitLab setup

The GITLAB_API_TOKEN environment variable must be set for Gitlab. This should be a GitLab access token

Optionally: The GITLAB_URL environment variable can be set to use a Gitlab on-premise setup, otherwise it will use https://gitlab.com.

Using Microplane

Microplane has an opinionated workflow for how you should manage git changes across many repos. To make a change, use the following series of commands.

1. Init - target the repos you want to change using a Github "Advanced Search" Query
2. Clone - clone the repos you just targeted
3. Plan - run a script against each of the repos and preview the diff
4. Push - commit, push, and open a Pull Request
5. Merge - merge the PRs

For an in-depth example, check out the introductory blogpost.

Development

Build Locally

Microplane is a Golang project.

First, clone the repo.

To install dependencies run

make install_deps

To build, run

make build

You should now have a working build of Microplane in ./bin/mp.

Design

Microplane parallelizes various git commands and API calls.

At each step in the Microplane workflow, a repo only moves forward if the previous step for that repo was successful.

We persist the progress of a Microplane run in the following local file structure.

mp/
  init.json
  repo1/
    clone/
      clone.json
      <git-repo>
    plan/
      plan.json
      <git-repo-with-commit>
    push/
      push.json
    merge/
      merge.json
  repo2/
    ...

Releasing

To publish a release:

• PR then merge changes to master.
• Push another commit, updating VERSION with the new version and CHANGELOG.md with a description of the changes.
• CircleCI will publish a release to GitHub.