crontab-git

Treat your crontab like source code. Diff, history, atomic apply, rollback — all backed by a plain git repo you can read, grep, and push elsewhere.

No daemon. No hooks. No dependencies beyond git, crontab, and $EDITOR.

Install

curl -o /usr/local/bin/crontab-git https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kithfoss/crontab-git/main/crontab-git
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/crontab-git

Or clone and symlink:

git clone https://github.com/kithfoss/crontab-git.git ~/.local/src/crontab-git
ln -s ~/.local/src/crontab-git/crontab-git ~/.local/bin/

Quickstart

crontab-git init          # snapshot your existing crontab
crontab-git edit          # edit, diff, confirm, apply — all atomic
crontab-git log           # history
crontab-git diff          # is the live crontab in sync with the tracked copy?
crontab-git rollback HEAD~1   # restore previous version

Why

Editing crontab with crontab -e is high-stakes and leaves no trail:

• Typo? Silent cron failures for days.
• Forgot what you changed last Tuesday? man crontab won't tell you.
• Cron edited by someone else (or another tool)? No way to know.

crontab-git keeps a plain git repo at ~/.config/crontab-git/. Every edit is a commit. Drift detection catches out-of-band changes (other tools, another shell) and preserves them as "drift" commits so nothing is lost.

Commands

Command	What
init	Create the repo from current crontab
edit	Open tracked file in $EDITOR, diff, confirm, apply
diff	Show delta between live crontab and tracked file
apply	Install tracked file to crontab (no edit)
pull	Absorb out-of-band changes into history
log [N]	Show commits
show <ref>	Print a previous version
rollback <ref>	Restore to a previous version (as a new commit)
status	Quick summary

Atomic apply

Every edit/apply/rollback writes a tempfile, runs crontab <tempfile>, and only commits after a successful install. If crontab rejects the file (syntax error), nothing changes and git history stays clean.

Environment

• CRONTAB_GIT_DIR — override repo directory (default ~/.config/crontab-git)
• EDITOR / VISUAL — editor for edit (default vi)

Push your crontab to a private repo

Because it's a plain git repo, you can add a remote for backup:

cd ~/.config/crontab-git
git remote add origin git@github.com:you/my-crontab-private.git
git push -u origin main

Now your cron schedule lives somewhere beyond the machine. Don't push to public — your jobs are your setup.

License

MIT.