Silverbullet and Git

In a previous post, I talked a bit about a note-taking application called Silverbullet. Like I mentioned in that post, I have playing with it a bit and have found some use cases for it that I wanted to share.

With v2 of Silverbullet, the CONFIG settings are a bit different so spawned this post. Some of the previous documentation for the plugs have incomplete or old information so I wanted to provide both an update on my Silverbullet use and small guide on getting the Git plug to work.

Like I mentioned, the CONFIG page that is used for Silverbullet is now a bit different in that all settings go in there.

To get the Git plug installed there are a few things that you need to do. First you need to add this to the plugs section in the config.set

config.set {
  plugs = {
    "github:silverbulletmd/silverbullet-git/git.plug.js"
  }
}

Now notice, this is the same URL from the original instructions, it is just formatted differently.

The next change is adding the Git config changes you want within the same Space-Lua config

git = {
  autoSync = true
}

Now that you have that added, syncing can occur to your Git repository from Silverbullet. I got a tip from a friend about adding a command to force the Git Sync and I’m a huge fan of this. To add a command shortcut to Git Sync,

shortcuts = {
  {
    command = 'Git: Sync',
    key = "Ctrl-Alt-."
    }
}

Now with that, this is our final configuration in the space-lua block in the CONFIG page

config.set {
  plugs = {
    -- Add your plugs here (https://silverbullet.md/Plugs)
    "github:silverbulletmd/silverbullet-git/git.plug.js"
  },
  git = {
    autoSync = true
  },
  shortcuts = {
    {
      command = 'Git: Sync',
      key = "Ctrl-Alt-."
    }
  }
}

Once, you have that, just open your command palette and click Plugs: Update and for good measure, System: reload.

Now, that should take care of the Silverbullet side, there are some things you will need to do on the actual container side.

To start, go ahead and get a shell inside the hosting container

docker exec -it silverbullet /bin/bash

Now change in the /space directory and Git init inside there.

cd /space
git init

Now you will want to configure your user name and email for Git and set the pull.rebase to false

git config user.name "username"
git config user.email "email"
git config pull.rebase false

After that we are going to add the remote branch with your personal access token from Github. Then, we will add the branch main, add all files ending in the extension for markdown, commit, and push to main.

git remote add origin https://PAT@github.com/user/repo
git branch -m main
git add *.md
git commit -m “Initial commit”
git push origin main

Now that you have done that, you need to do one last command inside this container and that is

git push --set-upstream origin main

After that, you should be setup to Git: Sync within Silverbullet.