suggestion: use a native golang git library instead of binary

[DataHearth]

Hey! I've been browsing your code to understand how to build up sema and I came across the git section in agent/agent.go.

I think using a native golang git library would be a great addition as you'll abstract sema from the git binary (which may differ from a system to another).

I've been using this library (which is listed on the git-scm website). It's a great and efficient library.
This should be simple to implement as you don't extensively rely on git commands.

[sharpvik]

That's a great suggestion! However, I cannot figure out how to properly implement the git add . operation that is so dear to my heart. If you delete a file in a repo, running

// `sema -a` will result in the following:
a.workTree.AddGlob(".")

will not actually stage that deletion (at least on my computer). Please see this file to review my failed attempt.

I have created this PR to work on the issue and I'd really appreciate your help with this one since you already have experience with the library.

Have you got any spare time to help?

[DataHearth]

Hmmm, so the problem is still there... I've found an already opened issue relating this problem. It also has a PR but it hasn't beed merged yet...
I'm gonna ping the PR and the issue.

My workaround was to use (unfortunatly) the git binary just for this operation.
BUT, I've found this comment giving a good workaround. I haven't tested yet.

edit: if you want to check out what I did => https://github.com/DataHearth/config-mapper/blob/main/internal/git/git.go .
It is not really advanced but it can give you an idea on how I built my cli around it. I'm gonna test the workaround tonight or tomorrow.

[DataHearth]

Ok, it seems to work :). Here's how I did it

w, err := r.repository.Worktree()
if err != nil {
	return err
}

status, err := w.Status()
if err != nil {
	return err
}

for file := range status {
    _, err = w.Add(file)
    if err != nil {
        return err
    }
}

You first get your working tree then get its status (equivalent to git status). Then you loop through each file and add them one by one. After, you should be good to go :)

[sharpvik]

Thanks so much for this, @DataHearth. I've rewritten most of the functionality by now. Last question (I hope): is there a way to enact git push? I don't seem to find a function with that name.

[DataHearth]

Sure ! You can use your repository to push changes

repo, err := git.PlainOpen(".")
...
// add your thing, status, worktree, etc

err := repo.Push(&git.PushOptions{})

There you go :)

[sharpvik]

What about authentication, @DataHearth? When I used this method, I get

ssh: handshake failed: ssh: unable to authenticate, attempted methods [none publickey], no supported methods remain

Am I supposed to parse git configs myself to get this to work?

[DataHearth]

Hey, I encoutered another issue (but quite similar to this one actually) a while ago and resolved it using this issue go-git/go-git#411

[sharpvik]

I tried this fix, @DataHearth, but it didn't do much for me on MacOS. The error message is still the same.

It looks like the rest of the functionality is in order and works fine with go-git so here's what I'm going to do: I'm gonna merge this pull request without the changes to the --push implementation. Sema will partially still rely on the git command to perform push operations.

I'll open an issue just for the push with go-git and I would welcome you to open a PR with a proposition for a stable fix for this. Then I'll test it on MacOS and Linux and if it works, we'll merge it.