degit

What is degit?

Degit is a straightforward tool for cloning repositories from GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket without including the entire git history. It is particularly useful for quickly setting up new projects from templates.

What are degit's main functionalities?

Clone a repository

This feature allows you to clone a repository from GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket. The cloned repository will not include the git history, making it a clean copy suitable for starting new projects.

degit('user/repo')

Clone a specific branch

This feature allows you to clone a specific branch of a repository. This is useful when you want to start a project based on a particular branch rather than the default branch.

degit('user/repo#branch-name')

Clone a repository to a specific directory

This feature allows you to specify a destination directory for the cloned repository. This is useful for organizing your projects in a specific directory structure.

degit('user/repo', { dest: 'path/to/destination' })

Other packages similar to degit

git-clone

The git-clone package is a simple utility for cloning git repositories. Unlike degit, it includes the entire git history, making it suitable for situations where you need the full commit history.

download-git-repo

The download-git-repo package allows you to download a git repository from GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket. It is similar to degit but offers more flexibility in terms of authentication and custom headers.

ghrepo

The ghrepo package is a tool for managing GitHub repositories. It offers functionalities like cloning, creating, and deleting repositories. While it provides more features than degit, it is more complex and may not be as straightforward for simple cloning tasks.

README

degit — straightforward project scaffolding

degit makes copies of git repositories. When you run degit some-user/some-repo, it will find the latest commit on https://github.com/some-user/some-repo and download the associated tar file to ~/.degit/some-user/some-repo/commithash.tar.gz if it doesn't already exist locally. (This is much quicker than using git clone, because you're not downloading the entire git history.)

Requires Node 8 or above, because async and await are the cat's pyjamas

Installation

npm install -g degit

Usage

Basics

The simplest use of degit is to download the master branch of a repo from GitHub to the current working directory:

degit user/repo

# these commands are equivalent
degit github:user/repo
degit [e-mail]:user/repo
degit https://github.com/user/repo

Or you can download from GitLab and BitBucket:

# download from GitLab
degit gitlab:user/repo
degit [e-mail]:user/repo
degit https://gitlab.com/user/repo

# download from BitBucket
degit bitbucket:user/repo
degit [e-mail]:user/repo
degit https://bitbucket.org/user/repo

# download from Sourcehut
degit git.sr.ht/user/repo
degit [e-mail]:user/repo
degit https://git.sr.ht/user/repo

Specify a tag, branch or commit

The default branch is master.

degit user/repo#dev       # branch
degit user/repo#v1.2.3    # release tag
degit user/repo#1234abcd  # commit hash

Create a new folder for the project

If the second argument is omitted, the repo will be cloned to the current directory.

degit user/repo my-new-project

Specify a subdirectory

To clone a specific subdirectory instead of the entire repo, just add it to the argument:

degit user/repo/subdirectory

HTTPS proxying

If you have an https_proxy environment variable, Degit will use it.

Private repositories

Private repos can be cloned by specifying --mode=git (the default is tar). In this mode, Degit will use git under the hood. It's much slower than fetching a tarball, which is why it's not the default.

Note: this clones over SSH, not HTTPS.

See all options

degit --help

Not supported

• Private repositories

Pull requests are very welcome!

Wait, isn't this just git clone --depth 1?

A few salient differences:

• If you git clone, you get a .git folder that pertains to the project template, rather than your project. You can easily forget to re-init the repository, and end up confusing yourself
• Caching and offline support (if you already have a .tar.gz file for a specific commit, you don't need to fetch it again).
• Less to type (degit user/repo instead of git clone --depth 1 [e-mail]:user/repo)
• Composability via actions
• Future capabilities — interactive mode, friendly onboarding and postinstall scripts

JavaScript API

You can also use degit inside a Node script:

const degit = require('degit');

const emitter = degit('user/repo', {
	cache: true,
	force: true,
	verbose: true,
});

emitter.on('info', info => {
	console.log(info.message);
});

emitter.clone('path/to/dest').then(() => {
	console.log('done');
});

Actions

You can manipulate repositories after they have been cloned with actions, specified in a degit.json file that lives at the top level of the working directory. Currently, there are two actions — clone and remove. Additional actions may be added in future.

clone

// degit.json
[
	{
		"action": "clone",
		"src": "user/another-repo"
	}
]

This will clone user/another-repo, preserving the contents of the existing working directory. This allows you to, say, add a new README.md or starter file to a repo that you do not control. The cloned repo can contain its own degit.json actions.

remove

// degit.json
[
	{
		"action": "remove",
		"files": ["LICENSE"]
	}
]

Remove a file at the specified path.

See also

• zel by Vu Tran
• gittar by Luke Edwards

License

MIT.