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Ah bufdo, that'll do!

A while ago I worked on a method to allow local writing of development logs in markdown, which I could then upload to Github where my supervisor could take a look. Here are the steps..

:bufdo

"Real programmers use vim.."

In true vim-fan-boy fashion, I write my development logs in vim and then like to have them render from within vim. To do this I use a plugin called InstantMarkdownPreview. However, the syntax used to render images using this plugin is different from the syntax generally required and used by Github. Therefore, a workaround has been developed such that I write the logs locally on a local branch, and then checkout to master and upon a git push some undercover wizardry works behind the scenes.

Considering there could be potentially 100's or markdown files at some point, whatever I do, I should future proof the method for when that day comes when I have many files to edit at once. Enter vim's :bufdo feature. Below is a brief overview on the workflow required to be able to achieve this.

First, one needs a workflow where we have one master branch which will be used to push Github markdown flavoured files to a remote repo, and local which will have InstantMarkdownPreview type of markdown files that can be viewed locally from within vim with the command :InstantMarkdownPreview

The InstantMarkdown file has the following syntax for displaying images:

![](a/raw/b/inc/screenshots/repo-clone-and-sync.png)

However, Github, does not care for the "a/raw/b" that prepends the path of where the image is. So, one can have this is the pre-push file (found in .git/hooks/pre-push that combines the efforts of :bufdo and git hooks to achieve a seamlessly flow from local to Github markdown rendering.

pre-push looks like: 

#!/bin/bash
vim -E -s *.md < cmds.vim && git commit -am "Changes made for Github rendering"
Where the contents of cmds.vim just contain the commands to be executed in vim 
:bufdo %s/a\/raw\/b\///ge | update
Now this is all set up, one can do the following, create a local branch which be used write the development logs and to view them in vim 
git co -b local
Then when the respective files have been written, which paths to images looking like so:

![](a/raw/b/inc/screenshots/repo-clone-and-sync.png)

One cane save these files, git add and git commit them, and then go to master.

git co master
git merge local -X theirs
The git merge local -X theirs basically forces the merge even though we will have conflicts relating to the different syntax. A commit message will appear in vim asking to confirm the merge. Saving this, and then doing a git push now does the job! The new syntax that bufdo changes images to looks like the following:

![](inc/screenshots/repo-clone-and-sync.png)

Ready for Github :-)

Note: A git push --no-verify may be required if changes are made to the repo that don't invole the workflow described above. --no-verify allows one to skip the git hook file pre-push