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WatchTower helps you track how much time you spend on all of your projects, at the project, directory, and file level.

Introduction

Did you ever want to keep track of how much time you really spend on all of your projects? Sure, you can try to remember to keep running estimates of your time in the hope that you can aggregate those estimates later into some meaningful data. But sometimes you forget, or an error creeps into your estimate. And those errors add up. Quickly.

You can try some tracking software that depends on you to start and stop timers. But what happens if you forget to start or stop one of those timers?

What you need is a passive system that will take care of all of this for you, so you can focus on the actual work, which is where WatchTower comes into play.

WatchTower runs in the background and keeps track of the time spent editing each file with one of the supported editors (listed below). Since WatchTower keeps track of the time spent on each file, and it knows which project each file belongs to, you can view details and statistics on each project, right down to the file level.

Features

  • Tracks the supported editors (listed below) and records the time spent on all files as specified via the customized configuration file (Git and code_path are supported).

  • A WatchTower Home Page where you can see how much time you've spent on all watched projects, as well as a total summary. The default display includes all projects worked on during the current month, but the page includes a date picker for easy selection. You can select a project to view the project's Detail Page.

Example: WatchTower Home Page

  • A Project Detail Page that displays a detailed report of the time spent on the project, each directory within the project, and each file. The default display includes all files worked on during the current month, but the page includes a date picker for easy selection.

Example: Project Detail Page

Supported Editors

  • TextMate
  • Xcode
  • ViM (gVim and MacVim are also supported)

Supported Operating Systems

  • Mac OS X
  • Linux

Getting Started

  1. Install the WatchTower gem:

    $ gem install watch_tower

  2. Followed by:

    $ watchtower install
$ watchtower load_bootloader

  3. Review the self-explanatory configuration file located at ~/.watch_tower/config.yml and make any necessary changes.

Update

Run 

$ watchtower install_bootloader
$ watchtower reload_bootloader

to update the path to the WatchTower binary in the boot loader.

Usage

Opening the web interface

The installation process creates a launcher on login that starts WatchTower. You can view your WatchTower Home Page via the web interface by going to http://localhost:9282, or from the command line:

$ watchtower open

Rehash

If for some reason, you think that the elapsed time of any of your projects is wrong ( c.f #9 ) then you can recalculate the elapsed time of all projects and all their files by visiting http://localhost:9282/rehash, but please keep in mind that this can take a long time to process.

Commands

For more information on available commands, you can take a look at the WatchTower Command Line wiki page.

Contributing

Please feel free to fork and send pull requests, but please follow the following guidelines:

  • Prefix each commit message with the filename or the module followed by a colon and a space, for example 'README: fix a typo' or 'Server/Project: Fix a typo'.
  • Include tests.
  • Do not change the version, We will take care of that.

You can also take a look at the TODO list for what's in mind for the project

Contact

For bugs and feature request, please use Github issues, for other requests, you can contact us:

Don't forget to follow me on Github and Twitter for news and updates.

Credits

Please see the CREDITS.md file.

License

This code is free to use under the terms of the MIT license.

Copyright (c) 2011 TechnoGate <[email protected]>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.