swx is a command line application for keeping track of the amount of
time you spend on different activities.
Start work on a new activity: swx s -c <activity>
Switch to an existing activity: swx s <activity>
Stop working on any activity: swx s
Resume work on the most recent activity: swx resume
Switch to the most recent activity that matches a regular expression: swx s -r <regex>
Switch to a "child activity" of the current activity: swx s <current-activity> <child-activity>,
or just: swx s _ <child-activity>
Switch to the "parent activity" of the current activity: swx s __
Switch to a "sibling activity" of the current activity: swx s __ <sibling-activity>
Print a summary of today's activities in tree form: swx d
Print today's activities in "verbose" form: swx d -v
Print yesterday's activities: swx d -a1
Print activities of two days ago: swx d -a2
Print a time-ordered list of today's individual activity stints: swx d -l
Print a summary of the entire activity log: swx p
Print a summary of activities since a given date and time: swx p -f <YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm>
Print a summary of activitites between two times: swx p -f <YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm> -t <YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm>
Print a summary of activities matching a regular expression: swx p -r <regex>
Print just the name of the current activity swx c
Open the time log for editing: swx e
Get configuration info: swx config
Open the configuration file for editing: swx config -e
Get general help: swx help
Get help on a particular command: swx help <command>
To use swx, you enter a brief "switching" command each time you start an
activity, end an activity, or switch from one activity to another. swx
makes a timestamped record of each such "transition" in a plain text file—which
you are free to peruse and edit. Then when you want a summary of how you have
spent your time, enter one of the reporting commands—which provide various
filtering and output options—and swx will analyze the text file and
output the requested information.
Like git and various other command-line programs, swx comes with a range
of subcommands. You can see a list of these by entering swx help. The basic
pattern of usage is:
swx <COMMAND> [OPTIONS...] [ARGUMENTS...] [OPTIONS...]
Options to <COMMAND> can be entered indifferently either before or after
[ARGUMENTS...], but cannot appear before <COMMAND>.
Suppose you start working on the activity of "answering emails". You would come
up with a name for this activity, say answering-emails. When you first start
working on this activity, you would enter the following at the command line:
swx switch answering-emails -c
You can use the alias s if you don't want to type switch:
swx s answering-emails -c
The -c option tells the switch command that this is the first time you
are working on this activity: it will protest if you try to create a new activity
without this option. This guards against error in case you think you're creating
a new activity, but accidentally give it the same name as an existing one. On
subsequent occasions, when you switch back to an already-used activity, you
would omit the -c—and again swx will helpfully protest in case you
think you're reusing an existing activity, but aren't.
Like all options in swx, the -c can be entered either before or after
the other arguments.
Suppose you stop answering emails and restart work on a previous activity, say
"spreadsheeting". You record a transition from one activity to another, by
entering swx switch (or swx s) plus the name of the activity that you
are switching to, in this case:
swx s spreadsheeting
If you cease doing any activity at all (or at least, any activity you care about recording), you record this cessation by simply entering:
swx s
If you pass the -r option to swx switch, then the activity argument will
be treated as a regular expression (of the POSIX extended variety), rather
than an exact activity name. A switch will then be recorded to the most recently
active activity the name of which matches that regular expression. This can save
a fair bit of typing when switching back to a recently used activity.
After switching to an activity, swx always displays a message confirming the
full name of the activity switched to—or confirming that activity has ceased,
as the case may be.
Note activity names are case-sensitive.
Suppose you are currently "inactive"—on a lunch break, let's say—and then
you return to work and want to resume the most recent activity you were working
on before your break. Enter swx resume to record a resumption of the
activity you were working on just before the break. This is equivalent to
entering swx switch together with the name of the most recent activity.
If you are currently "active", then swx resume will record a switch to
the activity that was active just before the current one. This is useful for
when you are working on one activity, are briefly interrupted by another
activity, and then want to resume work on the original activity.
After resuming an activity, swx always displays a message confirming the
full name of the activity resumed.
To output a summary of the time you have spent on your various activities, two "reporting commands" are available:
swx print swx day
Enter swx help <COMMAND> for detailed usage information in regards to
each of these. They follow a similar pattern, and allow you to enter an
activity name, if you want to see only time spent on a given activity, or to
omit the activity name, if you want to see time spent on all activities.
swx day (or swx d) prints a summary of only the current day's
activities, or, if passed the -a option with an integer argument n, the
activities of n days ago. For example, swx day -a1 prints a summary of
yesterday's activities.
swx print (or swx p) will by default print a summary of activity that
is not filtered by time at all. With a timestamp passed to the -f option,
it will show only activity since the given time; with a timestamp passed to the
-t option, only activity up until the given time. Using these options
combined, one can filter for activity between two times.
By default, activities are summarised in "tree" form, showing the hierarchical
structure of activities, sub-activities and so on. If you pass the -v
option to a reporting command, then activities will instead be displayed
in "verbose" form, showing the full name of each activity, with activities
ordered alphabetically by name. If you pass the -l option to a reporting
command, then instead a list of individual activity stints will be shown, in
the following format:
<START-TIME> <END-TIME> <HOURS-SPENT-IN-DIGITAL-FORMAT> <ACTIVITY>
If you pass the -r option, then the activity string you enter will be
treated as a regular expression (of the POSIX extended variety), rather than an
exact activity name. Any activities will then be included in the report for
which their activity name matches this regular expression.
If you pass the -b option, then in addition to the other info, the
earliest time at which each activity was conducted during the period
in question will be printed next to each activity. (This does not apply when
outputting in "list" mode.)
If you pass the -e option, then in addition to, and to the right of,
any other info, the latest time at which each activity was conducted during
the period in question will be printed next to each activity. (This does not
apply when ouputting in "list" mode.)
Note that if -b and -e options are both provided, the output from
the -e command is always printed to the right of that from the -b
command, regardless of the order in which the -b and -e options are
provided.
If you pass the -c option to a reporting command, then the results will
be output in CSV format.
If you pass the -s option, then the results will be output in "succinct"
format, with the total duration shown only, and no activity names shown. This
does not apply in "list" (-l) mode.
The amount of time spent on each activity during the relevant period is shown in terms of digital hours.
By default, the number of hours shown is rounded to the nearest tenth of an hour (6 minutes). This behaviour can be changed in the Configuration.
Activities are often divided conceptually into sub-activities,
sub-sub-activities and so forth. swx tries to capture this with the
concept of simple and compound activities. A simple activity is specified
using a single word, not containing whitespace, e.g. email.
A compound activity is specified as multiple words separated by whitespace,
e.g. email customer-service.
When passing the name of a compound activity to a swx command, it can
just be passed directly as multiple arguments to the command, without
enclosing it in quotes. swx will treat it as single, compound activity.
E.g., entering swx switch email customer-service is exactly equivalent
to entering swx switch 'email customer-service'.
When entering a series of whitespace-separated "activity components" at the
command line (e.g. email customer-service), there are certain "placeholders"
that can stand in for one or more such components, and are expanded accordingly
before the command line is properly processed.
_expands into the (name of the) current activity. In our example, if the current activity wereemail customer-service, then_would expand intoemail customer-service.__expands into the "parent" of the current activity. In our current example, this would expand intoemail.___expands into the parent of the parent of the current activity. In our current example, since the parent (email) has no parent itself, this would simply expand into the empty string.
In general, any number of underscores can be entered (with obviously limited usefulness) to traverse up the "activity tree" by a corresponding number of "generations".
If there is no currently active activity, then all placeholders will simply expand into the empty string.
These placeholders can be inserted anywhere among the command-line arguments
where one or more activity "components" are expected, and will be expanded
accordingly. This can save some typing when switching between closely related
activities, or generating a report on the current activity or related
activities. E.g., if we are currently active on email customer-service
enquiries and want to record a switch to email customer-service
complaints, then we can enter simply swx s __ complaints, rather than
having to enter swx s email customer-service complaints.
swx stores a log of your activities in a plain text file, which by default
is located in your home directory, and is named <YOUR-USER-NAME>.swx.
You are free to edit this file if you want to change the times or activity names
recorded. The command swx edit, or swx e, will cause the log to be
opened in your default text editor.
When editing the log, be sure to preserve the prescribed timestamp format, and to leave a space between the timestamp and the activity name (if any) on any given line. (Lines without an activity name record a cessation of activity.) Also, the time log must be such that the timestamps appear in ascending order (or at least, non-descending order). Be sure to preserve this order if you edit the file manually.
You should not enter future-dated entries: the application will raise an error if it reads a future-dated entry in the log.
Configuration options are stored in your home directory in the file named
.swxrc, which will be created the first time you run the program. The
contents of this file should be reasonably self-explanatory.
The command swx config will output a summary of your configuration settings.
Passing -e to this command will cause the configuration file to be opened
in your default text editor.
Note that if you change the timestamp format, then this will change the format of timestamps as read from and written to the data file, without retroactively reformatting the timestamps that are already stored. This will result in parsing errors, unless you are prepared to reformat manually all your already-entered timestamps to the new format.
Enter swx help to see a summary of usage, or swx help <COMMAND> to
see a summary of usage for a particular command.
Enter swx version to see version information.
Enter swx current (or swx c) to print just the name of the current
activity. If there is no current activity, this will print a blank line.
swx is written in standard C++, and uses some C++11 features. It is designed
to be built and run on Unix-like systems only (Linux, OSX, BSD), and will not
work on Windows. To build it, you will need:
- A reasonably conformant C++ compiler and standard library implementation (note if you are using GCC, you will need at least version 4.9)
- CMake (http://www.cmake.org) (commonly available via package managers such as Homebrew)
In addition, if you want to build and run the test suite, you will need the Boost unit test framework (version 1.53.0 or greater), which is available at http://www.boost.org. This is also commonly available via package managers such as Homebrew.
Having obtained these dependencies, download and unzip the swx source code,
and cd into the project root.
To configure an optimized build, enter:
cmake -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release .
(Note the dot at the end.) (For other build options, see the CMake documentation.) Then to build and install, enter:
make install
You may need to run this as root (e.g. by prefixing the above command with
sudo), depending on your system and the installation directory.
To build the application without installing it, enter:
make
To build and run the test suite, enter:
make run_tests
When you run make install, a file named install_manifest.txt will be
created in the source directory. This file contains a list of all files
installed by make install. To uninstall swx, you need manually to
remove each of the files in this list (of which there may well be only one).
In addition, the first time you run swx, it will create a configuration
file called .swxrc, in your home directory. Also, the first time you run
swx switch (or swx s), it will create a data file, in which your
activity log will be stored. Unless you have specified otherwise in your
configuration file, this data file will be stored in your home directory, and
will be named <YOUR-USER-NAME>.swx. You may or may not want to remove this
file if you uninstall swx.
The name "swx" stands for "stopwatch extended", reflecting that the application works essentially like a stopwatch which has been extended with various additional functionality.
You are welcome to contact me about this project at:
Copyright 2014, 2015 Matthew Harvey
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.
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