git-now-playing

git-now-playing is an attempt to bring some of the panache of the early aughts' AIM away messages to your git commits, by including what you're currently listening to when you write a git commit.

There are two ways to do this. By default, the binary just writes properly formatted track info to standard output, making it easy to integrate into the prepare-commit-msg hook in git. If the --daemon flag is passed before the config file, however, it runs as a background process and checks in with Spotify and/or Plex every ten seconds to find out what you're listening to, and updating a specified file with that information. You can then use this file as your git commit template.

Install

There aren't binary releases yet, sorry. I'm lazy and this was a 12 hour nerdsnipe gone awry. So you're gonna need to run go build or go install yourself. go install paddy.dev/git-now-playing should, in theory, do it. Good luck!

Configure

You must use a configuration file when running git-now-playing. You also need to use Vault. Good luck!

Configuration is done mostly through an HCL file:

vault {
  address = "https://my.vault.server:8200/"
  mount_path = "kv_v2_secrets_engine_path"
}

# this block is optional
# if not set, output when running as a daemon gets written to
# $HOME/.config/gitmessage
output {
  path = "/path/where/file/containing/now/playing/track/should/be/written.txt"
}

# this block is optional
# also, you can specify it as many times as you want
# git-now-playing will ask all of them what you're playing
plex {
  server = "https://my.plex.server:32400/"
  
  # this bit is optional and will default to "plex"
  # it's the key inside the kv v2 vault in vault that contains
  # your plex token
  vault_path = "plex"

  # this bit is optional. It's the names of the Plex users that should be
  # considered "you" if multiple people use this Plex server.
  users = ["me", "otherme"]
}

# this block is optional
# if it's excluded, spotify won't be checked
spotify {
  # this attribute is optional, and will default to "spotify"
  # it's the key inside the kv v2 vault in vault that contains your spotify
  # token, client ID, and client secret
  vault_path = "spotify"

  # this attribute is optional, and will default to "0.0.0.0:8765". It's the IP
  # and port you want the web server git-now-playing needs to temporarily stand
  # up to receive the Spotify authorization callback on to listen on
  auth_callback_addr = "0.0.0.0:8765"
}

You'll also need to set up Vault. As mentioned, you're gonna want a kv secrets engine (v2) in Vault set up to hold the sensitive credentials, because writing secrets to config files makes me anxious.

If you want to grant a Vault token that has the least possible access (you should!) you can use this policy:

path "git-now-playing/data/*" {
  capabilities = ["read", "patch"]
}

You're going to want to set up the following credentials:

(Note: for all these examples, we're using git-now-playing as the mount_path of your Vault secrets engine. Replace it with whatever you're using. We're also using the default vault_paths for each service. Replace them with whatever you're using if you're not using the defaults.)

Spotify

$ vault kv put git-now-playing/spotify client_id=$SPOTIFY_CLIENT_ID client_secret=$SPOTIFY_CLIENT_SECRET redirect_url=$SPOTIFY_REDIRECT_URL

You're gonna need to set up a Spotify app to do this bit. You can do that here. $SPOTIFY_CLIENT_ID and $SPOTIFY_CLIENT_ID are on the main application page after you create it. For $SPOTIFY_REDIRECT_URL, you're going to need to add a callback URL to your app. You gotta click "Edit Settings" to do this. Make the callback URL http://localhost:8765/ or whatever will reach the auth_callback_addr configured in the spotify block of your HCL config.

The first time you run git-now-playing, it's gonna ask you to authorize your application. Click the link and it'll take care of the rest. After this happens, the token will be stored in Vault, and should manage itself. Sorta. Though now that I think about it, I don't think I ever wrote the bit where it updates the token after it gets refreshed. Whoooops. Probably should do that.

Plex

This bit is easier. You just need to get your hands on a Plex token and then run

$ vault kv put git-now-playing/plex token=$PLEX_TOKEN

Running

Git Hook

Set up a git prepare-commit-msg hook that will run this program and prepend its standard output to whatever the contents of the commit file are. A sample is found below. You need to pass in a VAULT_TOKEN environment variable with the Vault token that git-now-playing can use to read and update secrets with.

Setting Up Your Commit Hook

To set up a git hook for this, modify the .git/hooks/prepare-commit-msg file to look something like this:

#!/bin/bash
COMMIT_MSG_FILE=$1
NOW_PLAYING=$(VAULT_TOKEN="{vault token here}" /path/to/git-now-playing /path/to/git-now-playing.hcl)
COMMIT_CONTENTS=$(cat $COMMIT_MSG_FILE)

if [[ ! $COMMIT_CONTENTS =~ .*"${NOW_PLAYING}".* ]]; then
	if [[ $COMMIT_CONTENTS =~ ^\n.* ]]; then
		echo "${NOW_PLAYING}${COMMIT_CONTENTS}" > $COMMIT_MSG_FILE
	else
		echo "${COMMIT_CONTENTS}${NOW_PLAYING}" > $COMMIT_MSG_FILE
	fi
fi

If you want to use this hook in all of your repositories and you're using git 2.9 or later, you can run git config --global core.hooksPath /path/to/central/hook/location and then put that prepare-commit-msg file in that directory, and it will be used for all your git repos.

Daemon Mode

Run this program as a background process. I use systemd. This bit is left as an exercise for the reader for now. You need to pass in a VAULT_TOKEN environment variable with the Vault token that git-now-playing can use to read and update secrets with. So running it looks like this:

$ VAULT_TOKEN={vault token here} /path/to/git-now-playing --daemon /path/to/config.hcl

Setting Up Your Commit Template

To set up the output as the default template for your git commit messages, run:

$ git config --global commit.template ~/.config/gitmessage

If you used the output block in your HCL config, use the path there instead of ~/.config/gitmessage.

License

This software is licensed under the MIT license, and I'd like to direct your attention to the bits about no liability or warranty. This software is a bad idea that I ran with and I think you probably shouldn't use it because it's deeply cursed.