giget

What is giget?

The giget npm package is a tool that allows users to quickly download GitHub repositories and gists without needing to clone or set up Git. It is designed to be a fast and straightforward way to fetch code from GitHub.

What are giget's main functionalities?

Download GitHub repositories

This command downloads the specified GitHub repository to the current directory.

npx giget owner/repo

Download GitHub gists

This command downloads the specified GitHub gist to the current directory.

npx giget gist <gist-id>

Download specific files or directories

This command downloads a specific file or directory from a GitHub repository.

npx giget owner/repo/path/to/file

Download specific branch, tag, or commit

This command downloads the repository as it is at the specified branch, tag, or commit.

npx giget owner/repo#ref

Other packages similar to giget

degit

Degit is a similar tool that provides a straightforward way to download the contents of a git repository without the full version history. It is faster than using git clone and is useful for scaffolding projects. Compared to giget, degit focuses on git repositories and does not have built-in support for gists.

download-git-repo

download-git-repo is a Node.js module that allows you to download GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket repositories. It is similar to giget in that it lets you download repositories, but it also supports other platforms besides GitHub and does not have a specific focus on gists.

README

✨ giget

Easily download git repositories

Features

✔ Multi-provider support (GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket).

✔ Fast cloning using tarball gzip without depending on local git and tar commands or downloading history.

✔ Works online and offline with disk cache support.

✔ Support extracting with a subdir.

Usage (CLI)

npx giget@latest unjs/template my-lib

# ✨ Successfully cloned https://github.com/unjs/template/tree/main/ to my-lib

npx giget@latest <repo> [<dir>] [...options]

Arguments

• repo: A URI describing provider, repository, subdir, and branch/ref.
  • Format is [provider]:repo[/subpath][#ref].
• dir: A relative or absolute path where to extract the repository.
  • If not provided, the name of the org + repo will be used as the name.

Options

• --force: Clone to exsiting directory even if exists.
• --offline: Do not attempt to download and use cached version.
• --prefer-offline: Use cache if exists otherwise try to download.
• --force-clean: ⚠️ Remove any existing directory or file recusively before cloning.
• --shell: ⚠️ Open a new shell with current working directory in cloned dir. (Experimental)

Examples

# Clone the main branch of github.com/unjs/template to unjs-template directory
npx giget@latest unjs/template

# Clone to myProject directory
npx giget@latest unjs/template myProject

# Clone dev branch
npx giget@latest unjs/template#dev

# Clone /test directory from main branch
npx giget@latest unjs/template/test

# Clone from gitlab
npx giget@latest gitlab:unjs/template

# Clone from bitbucket
npx giget@latest butbucket:unjs/template

Usage (Programmatic)

Install package:

# npm
npm install giget

# yarn
yarn install giget

# pnpm
pnpm install giget

Import:

// ESM
import { downloadRepo } from 'giget'

// CommonJS
const { downloadRepo } = require('giget')

downloadRepo(source, dir?, options?)

Example:

const { source, dir } = await downloadRepo('github:unjs/template')

Parameters:

• source: (string) Input source in format of [provider]:repo[/subpath][#ref].
• dir: (string) Destination directory to clone to. If not provided, user-name will be used relative to the current directory.
• options: (object) Options are usually inferred from the input string. You can customize them.
  • provider: (string) Either github, gitlab or bitbucket. The default is github.
  • repo: (string) Name of repository in format of {username}/{reponame}.
  • ref: (string) Git ref (branch or commit or tag). The default value is main.
  • subdirpath: (string) subdir of the repo to clone from. The default value is none.
  • force: (boolean) Extract to the exisiting dir even if already exsists.
  • forceClean: (boolean) ⚠️ Clean ups any existing directory or file before cloning.
  • offline: Do not attempt to download and use cached version.
  • preferOffline: Use cache if exists otherwise try to download.

Return value:

The return value is a promise that resolves to an object with the following properties:

• dir: (string) Path to extracted dir.
• url: (string) URL of repostiroy that can be opened in browser. Useful for logging.
• source: (string) Normalized version of the input source. Useful for logging.

💻 Development

• Clone this repository
• Enable Corepack using corepack enable (use npm i -g corepack for Node.js < 16.10)
• Install dependencies using pnpm install
• Run interactive tests using pnpm dev

Related projects

• https://github.com/samsonjs/gitter
• https://github.com/tiged/tiged
• https://github.com/Rich-Harris/degit

License

Made with 💛

Published under MIT License.

Changelog

0.0.4 (2022-09-08)

Features

• add experimental --shell (resolves #2) (a04fc53)

Bug Fixes

• output directory is optional (#5) (50035ef)