mrx — Multi Repo eXtreme

Parallel multi-repo git operations with a compact TUI. A faster replacement for myrepos (mr).

mrx reads your ~/.mrconfig, runs git commands across all repos in parallel, and shows live progress with per-repo status summaries. Expand any repo to see its full output.

Prerequisites

• Rust 1.87+ (curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh)
• Git installed and on PATH
• ~/.mrconfig — an INI-style config file listing your repos (same format as myrepos)
• SSH keys or HTTPS credentials configured for your git remotes

Install

cargo install --path . --locked

Usage

mrx <command> [options]

Commands

Command	Description
mrx update / pull	Pull latest changes (clone if repo is missing)
mrx status	Show working tree status
mrx diff	Show diffs
mrx push	Push commits
mrx fetch	Fetch from remotes
mrx checkout / co	Clone repos (skip if already exists)
mrx run <cmd>	Run an arbitrary shell command in each repo
mrx register	Register current repo in ~/.mrconfig
mrx list / ls	List configured repos (no TUI)
mrx sets	List named repo sets (no TUI)
mrx <action>	Run an action defined in the config (see Custom actions)

Options

Flag	Description
-j <N>	Max parallel jobs (default: min(cpus, 8))
-c <file>	Config file. Overrides -s
-s <name>	Named repo set (see Repo sets). Also $MRX_SET
-d <dir>	Working directory (default: [DEFAULT] base, else config file's parent)
--exit-on-done	Quit the TUI once every repo has finished, instead of waiting for q
--plain	Never use the TUI, even on a terminal
-v	Verbose output
-n	No recurse
-f	Force

Examples

mrx status              # quick overview of all repos
mrx fetch -j 32         # fetch all 32 repos at once
mrx run "git log -1"    # last commit in each repo
mrx list                # print repos without TUI
mrx -s work update      # update the repos in ~/.config/mrx/work.mrconfig
mrx update --exit-on-done   # unattended: quit when the last repo lands
mrx status | tee log    # not a terminal, so one line per repo instead of a TUI

TUI

The TUI shows a compact one-line-per-repo view with live spinners for in-progress operations:

  mrx status                                          28/32 done
 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  ✓ first-repo              clean
  ✓ second-repo             clean
  ⠹ third-repo              checking...
  ✓ fourth-repo             2 modified, 1 untracked
  - fifth-repo              not checked out
  ⠙ sixth-repo              checking...
  ✗ seventh-repo            merge conflict!
 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  [↑↓/jk] navigate  [enter] expand  [r] re-run  [q] quit

Press Enter on a repo to expand its full output in a bordered panel. Arrow keys scroll within the panel. Esc collapses it. Press r once the run has finished to re-run the same command across all repos without leaving the screen. q quits and prints a summary.

Config

mrx reads the same ~/.mrconfig format as mr:

[repos/a-repo]
checkout = git clone 'https://github.com/my-account/a-repo' 'a-repo'

[repos/another-repo]
checkout = git clone 'git@github.com:my-account/another-repo.git' 'cli'

Section names are relative paths from the base directory. Both HTTPS and SSH clone URLs are supported.

Whole-line # and ; comments are supported. They are not stripped mid-line, so a command body can contain either character.

Recognised keys

Key	Scope	Meaning
checkout	section	Clone command. The URL is parsed out of it for the built-in clone
base	[DEFAULT]	Directory section paths resolve against. Supports ~. Default: the config file's parent
skip	section	true leaves the section in the file but out of every operation
<action>	both	Shell body replacing a built-in (update, status, diff, push, fetch, checkout), or defining a new one
post_<action>	both	Shell body appended after a successful <action>

Any other key is yours. It has no meaning to mrx beyond being exported to the shell (below), so branch = master is just a value your own command reads.

Custom actions

Any key that isn't a built-in defines a subcommand:

[DEFAULT]
base = ~/dev
install = yarn install --frozen-lockfile

[dev/api]
checkout = git clone 'git@github.com:me/api.git' 'api'

[dev/site]
checkout = git clone 'git@github.com:me/site.git' 'site'
install = npm ci

mrx install then runs npm ci in site and yarn install --frozen-lockfile everywhere else. Resolution is section first, then [DEFAULT], then the built-in. An action defined nowhere exits 2 rather than silently skipping every repo.

Trailing arguments become positional parameters, so mrx install --offline reaches the body as $1.

Environment

Every action runs through sh -c with the repo as its working directory and:

MR_REPO      /Users/me/dev/api     # absolute path, also the cwd
MR_REPONAME  api                   # section basename
MR_CONFIG    /Users/me/.config/mrx/work.mrconfig
MR_ACTION    update                # which action is running
MR_<KEY>     ...                   # every config key visible to this repo

That last line is what makes per-repo exceptions work without mrx knowing anything about them:

[DEFAULT]
base = ~/dev
update = ~/bin/sync-repo.sh

[dev/monorepo]
branch = master
reset  = false

sync-repo.sh reads $MR_BRANCH and $MR_RESET. They are passed as environment rather than interpolated into the command string, so a value can never break out of the shell word it sits in.

What counts as a step

mrx builds an action out of up to three steps, and stops at the first that exits non-zero: the clone (if the repo isn't on disk yet), the <action> body, then the post_<action> body. A failure names the step it came from, so a row reads post_update: npm error Missing script: "build" rather than leaving you to guess.

Everything inside one body is a single sh -e -c invocation, so a body that lists several commands stops at the first one that fails:

[DEFAULT]
update = git pull --rebase
         npm ci
         npm run build

A failed git pull --rebase there ends the body and the repo reports the pull error. Without -e only npm run build's exit code would survive, so a repo that failed to pull but built fine would report success.

Append || true to a command that is allowed to fail:

[DEFAULT]
update = git pull --rebase
         ./optional-hook.sh || true
         npm ci

Repo sets

A set is a config file with a name, so unrelated repo lists can share one binary:

~/.config/mrx/work.mrconfig     ->  mrx -s work status
~/.config/mrx/oss.mrconfig      ->  mrx -s oss status

~/.mrconfig-<name> works too. $MRX_SET sets one without a flag, and -c overrides both. mrx sets lists what's on disk.

Because a set lives in ~/.config/mrx/, its sections would otherwise resolve against that directory, which is why [DEFAULT] base exists:

[DEFAULT]
base = ~/dev

With no -s and no $MRX_SET, mrx looks for a default set and falls back to ~/.mrconfig, so an existing setup keeps working untouched. A set named explicitly but not found is an error listing the paths tried, not a silent fallback.

Unattended runs

The TUI waits for q by design: that's when you expand the repo that failed and read its output. Two ways out:

• --exit-on-done quits once every repo has landed. Opt-in, so a bare mrx status is unchanged.
• When stdout isn't a terminal, the TUI is skipped entirely for one line per repo, with failures printing their captured output indented beneath. --plain forces that on a terminal too.

Either way the exit code is 0 only if every repo succeeded.