Zack Hobson

HCl has always just been about scratching an itch. I'd built it years ago when I needed to track my hours, and stopped maintaining it when I got a gig that didn't. In the late summer I started using Harvest again on a client project, and the experience made me realize that HCl still needed some work. The result was several weeks of bug-fixing and enhancements.

Improvements to task aliases

When I went back to using HCl, the biggest pain point was specifying and using task aliases. I had to look up the set command every time, and starting a timer felt cumbersome:

hcl set task.mytask 123 456
hcl start mytask some stuff

To address this, I made some changes to the start command, to make the command name optional and allow the task name to be specified anywhere with @. I also added a simpler alias command for aliasing tasks:

hcl alias mytask 123 456
hcl @mytask some stuff

Multiple Harvest accounts

You can use an alternate configuration by specifying HCL_DIR in the environment. This allows you to switch between multiple accounts quickly. For example, adding something like this to your shell configuration will create a myhcl command with separate account credentials:

alias myhcl="env HCL_DIR=~/.myhcl hcl"

You can then use myhcl and hcl with different account credentials to easily switch accounts.

Cancel a running timer

You can cancel a running timer (or the most recently stopped timer) with hcl cancel. You can also use hcl nvm and hcl oops.

Auto-completion of task aliases

You can enable completion of task aliases in Bash by adding this to your bashrc:

eval `hcl completion`

Refresh or review your Harvest credentials

You can now refresh your auth credentials with the --reauth option, and review them with hcl config. HCl also refreshes your credentials automatically on auth failure.

Log entries without a timer

At user request, there is a new command hcl log that you can use to log an entry without leaving a timer running:

hcl log @mytask +1.25 Finally did that thing.

MacOS X only: Passwords are now stored in your keychain

On MacOS X your password is now stored in your keychain! This behavior is automatic, you don't need to enable it. Unfortunately it's not available on any other platform yet.

More improvements and fixes since 0.3.x

• Added support (and continuous integration) for several modern Ruby platforms.
• The note command with no arguments displays all notes for a running timer.
• Allow filtering of tasks by project code.
• The stop command now checks for running timers from the previous day.
• The resume command now accepts an optional task.
• Added support for auto-retry on API throttle.