Looping Through Subdirectories and Running a Command in Each

Question

I have a set of repositories sorted into directories based on their VCS (Git, Mercurial, SVN). With Subversion I was able to run svn update * in the parent directory and it would loop through each directory and update each repository as expected. That's not the case for Git or Mercurial.

I would like to come up with a bash script that I can run to do exactly that, loop through directories and either git pull or hg pull in each. I just don't have much bash scripting experience.

It could be clarified whether you want the commands executed recursively (in all subfolders), where mj41's answer is the only one I've tried (from here and at other SO sites) that does that. — r_alex_hall, Nov 08 '19 at 01:48

score 117 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 05 '13 at 12:26

117

for dir in ~/projects/git/*; do (cd "$dir" && git pull); done

edited Jun 05 '13 at 12:26

slhck

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answered Sep 21 '09 at 22:04

jtimberman

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Thnx... but i need to capture errors as well. How can I do so. I've never done shell programming before. – shashwat Feb 16 '15 at 10:37
If I remove parenthesis it stops working. What's the concept behind it? – mohit Dec 17 '19 at 06:28
@mohit parentheses create a sub-shell where the commands are executed, so the `cd` will descend into the given directory and then when the sub-shell exits you'll be back in the original directory. – Ken Williams Mar 23 '22 at 15:41

score 29 · Answer 2 · edited Jan 05 '12 at 03:13

29

If you need it to be recursive:

find . -type d -name .git -exec sh -c "cd \"{}\"/../ && pwd && git pull" \;

This will descend into all the directories under the current one, and perform a git pull on those subdirectories that have a .git directory (you can limit it with -maxdepth).

edited Jan 05 '12 at 03:13

theprivileges

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answered Sep 21 '09 at 22:31

Dennis Williamson

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@thprivileges: clever! – Dennis Williamson Jan 06 '12 at 21:41
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`-execdir` is much better here: `find . -type d -name .git -execdir sh -c "pwd && git pull" \;` – daniel kullmann Jan 09 '12 at 07:51
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This is a better answer in my subjective opinion... Worked immediately for me.. Cheers – Ransom Jun 10 '15 at 14:30
Unlike the question that linked me here, this command actually worked. Thank you. – user1445967 May 02 '19 at 19:47

Ole Tange · Answer 3 · 2023-04-21T09:16:27.153

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If you have GNU Parallel http:// www.gnu.org/software/parallel/ installed you can do this:

cd ~/projects/git/; ls | parallel 'cd {} && git pull'

This will run in parallel so if some of the git servers' network connection are slow this may speed up things.

If the dir listing is < 128 KBytes, you can also do:

parallel 'cd {} && git pull' ::: ~/projects/git/*/

If you want to follow the pull happening (requires version 20230322):

parallel --ll 'cd {} && git pull' ::: ~/projects/git/*/

Watch the intro video for GNU Parallel to learn more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpaiGYxkSuQ

edited Apr 21 '23 at 09:16

answered Aug 22 '10 at 20:07

Ole Tange

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Maybe do `ls */` to be sure you're giving coherent input to `cd`. – Joe Corneli Mar 10 '18 at 19:17
Using the same idea, another option could be something like this: `find ~/projects/git/ -type d -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -exec realpath {} \; | parallel "cd {} && git pull"` ` – Francisco López Apr 21 '23 at 01:47

score 4 · Answer 4 · edited Jun 05 '13 at 12:26

4

This should work

find . -maxdepth 1 -type d -name '.git' -exec sh -c 'cd "{}" && pwd && git pull' \;

edited Jun 05 '13 at 12:26

slhck

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answered Jun 05 '13 at 11:16

mj41

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removing the `-maxdepth 1` flag, this is the only command I've found in a lot of searching and trying that executes a command _recursively_ (in all subdirectories, not just the directories one level down). – r_alex_hall Nov 08 '19 at 01:46

loretoparisi · Answer 5 · 2020-11-03T08:58:43.490

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To do it without using find but forloop

for dir in ~/projects/git/*/*/; do (cd "$dir" && git pull); done

edited Nov 03 '20 at 08:58

answered Oct 06 '16 at 12:45

loretoparisi

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That is not recursive, it just shows things that are two levels deep. – user1169420 Nov 02 '20 at 21:31
that is correct, thank you. – loretoparisi Nov 03 '20 at 08:58

Looping Through Subdirectories and Running a Command in Each

5 Answers5