Automating repetitive git / setup tasks

Imagine you work on a large number of projects. Each of those projects has its own git repository and accompanying notes file outside of the repo. Each git repository has its own githooks and custom setup.

Imagine having to work with multiple namespaces on different remote servers. Imagine setting up these projects by hand, multiple times a week.

Automation to the rescue ! Where I usually use Bash shell scripts to automate workflows, I'm moving more and more towards Python. It's cross-platform and sometimes easier to work with, as you have a large number of libraries at your disposal.

I wrote a simple Python script that does all of those things more or less 'automated'. Feed the script the name of the repository you want to clone, and optionally a namespace, patchfile and templatefile variable (either command-line or using a configuration file). The script will then:

clone the repository
modify the repository (e.g. apply githooks)
optionally modify the repository based on given variables
create a new notes file from a template
optionally modify the notes file based on given variables

The advantage is that you can use a configuration file containing the location of the remote git repository, the patchfile and the templatefile. If you setup multiple repositories from the same location and use the same repetitive tasks (e.g. adding git hooks for XML validation), this can save you a lot of time (at least it saves me a lot of time...).

Example of cloning a basic repo to the location /var/git/ :

setuprepo.py git-utilities --remote https://github.com --namespace
PeterMosmans --target /var/git

This will perform a basic clone of the repo https://github.com/PeterMosmans/git-utilities to /var/git/ .

If you usually set up some git-specific parameters like the author's email address, and git hooks for XML validation, then you could apply these automatically. First create a patchfile which applies the hooks (see for an example which adds the git hooks for XML validation), and specify that patchfile:

setuprepo.py git-utilities --remote https://github.com --namespace
PeterMosmans --patch hooks.patch

Besides cloning to the current directory (as no target is specified), this will apply the patchfile git.patch . Before patching, it will automatically replace the keywords NAMESPACE , REMOTE , REPO and TARGET with the corresponding variables.

If you create a notes file for each project from a templates file (outside of the repository directory) you could do that like this:

setuprepo.py git-utilities --remote https://github.com --namespace
PeterMosmans --template MY-NOTES --notes /location/of/notes

Again, this will replace the keywords NAMESPACE , REMOTE , REPO and TARGET in MY-NOTES with the corresponding variables.

And that's where the script really shines: You can specify all parameters in a configuration file, and specify that configuration file on the command line. So, you're setting up the remote, the namespace and the locations in the config file once, and you can use it a gazillion times:

setuprepo.py NAME-OF-REPO --config github.yml

The format of the configuration file (in this example github.yml ) is

namespace: PeterMosmans
notes: /location/where/notes/should/be/stored
patchfile: /location/of/patch.file
remote: https://github.com
target: /where/repositories/are/cloned/to
template: /base/template.txt

You can find the script at https://github.com/PeterMosmans/git-utilities/blob/master/setuprepo.py.

Enjoy !

usage: setuprepo.py [-h] [-c CONFIG] [-r REMOTE] [-n NAMESPACE] [--no-clone]
                    [--no-modify] [--no-patch] [--no-template]
                    [--patchfile PATCHFILE] [--prepare] [-t TARGET]
                    [--notes NOTES] [--template TEMPLATE] [-v]
                    repo

setuprepo.py version 0.6 - Clones and configures (patches) a git repository

Copyright (C) 2016 Peter Mosmans [Go Forward]
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

positional arguments:
  repo                  repository name

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -c CONFIG, --config CONFIG
                        load config file
  -r REMOTE, --remote REMOTE
                        remote repository address
  -n NAMESPACE, --namespace NAMESPACE
                        namespace of the repository
  --no-clone            do not clone repository
  --no-modify           do not modify patch and/or template
  --no-patch            do not patch repository
  --no-template         do not create template
  --patchfile PATCHFILE
                        patchfile for new repositories
  --prepare             clone the repo, create an original and modified
                        folder, and exit
  -t TARGET, --target TARGET
                        local target for the repository structure
  --notes NOTES         the directory where to create a notes file
  --template TEMPLATE   an empty notes template
  -v, --verbose         Be more verbose

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