validate

Dry-run audit. Discovers repos, validates configs, computes findings, and reports drift without making any changes.

gitrepoforge validate [flags]

Flags

Flag	Required	Description
--repo <name>	no	Target a single repo by its directory name.
--json	no	Output results as JSON instead of human-readable text.
--verbose	no	In human-readable mode, print colorized git-style line diffs for each finding.

Behavior

1. Loads the root config (.gitrepoforge-config) and config repo (config/, outputs/, templates/).
2. Discovers Git repos in the workspace (or targets the single --repo).
3. For each repo:
   • If no .gitrepoforge file exists, the repo is skipped.
   • Validates the per-repo config, including default_branch and any configured manifest path, against the shared config schema.
   • Selects template files, renders them, and compares them to the current file state, including the managed-files manifest at its resolved path.
4. Reports each repo’s status.

When --verbose is set, drift findings also include per-file diffs showing removed lines in red and added lines in green.

Statuses

Status	Meaning
clean	Repo is compliant and no changes are needed.
skipped	Repo has no .gitrepoforge file.
invalid	Validation errors such as missing config values or type mismatches.
drift	Findings were detected and files differ from the desired state.

When commit is not enabled in the root config and a repo is clean, the output may include an additional detail if the repo has uncommitted changes: compliant (not staged) or compliant (staged, not committed).

When ignore_missing is true in the root config, repos with the skipped status are not shown in the human-readable output.