Smarterware

Happy Birthday, Todo.txt CLI!

Three years ago today I released my first shell script (that was more than a dozen lines). The script, todo.sh, made adding items to a todo.txt file and marking them "done" a quick, command-line operation. Back then I was blustering on about how the command line was making a comeback, while Unix beards rolled their eyes and Windows users wondered what the heck I was talking about. (Some Mac nerds got it, though.)

Today the Todo.txt Command Line Interface (CLI) is still a crazy-active project, with over 500 people on the mailing list, a three-month-old GitHub code repository with 15 forks, regression tests, documentation, add-ons, and offshoots (like an iPhone app under development, a Windows GUI, and IM bots).

Given a long lack of commitment from the original author, the activity around the project was unlikely. Since I was so busy at Lifehacker, I'd dropped off the project mailing list for about two years between launch and this past January. But even without a proper code repository or organizer, coders kept improving the script and posting their patches. Since todo.sh was one of the things I wanted to get back to once I freed up my time, this past February I got back on the mailing list and got back to work. To make collaboration easier, we set up the GitHub project, and from there things sped ahead.

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