10 ms·

Generate new repositories with repository templates

146 points by mxstbr 7y ago

oracle2025 7y ago
I've been using cookiecutter for this mostly. But in general I feel like excessive boilerplate is more like a code smell. Reusable code should live in libraries, and frameworks should have sane defaults and configuration be kept to a minimum.
l0b0 7y ago
This is a part of something which could become a very powerful pattern: community-wide templates which include many best practices in a single commit: - Pre-commit hooks for linting/formatting and unit tests. - Basic CI pipeline configuration with at least build, test and release/deploy phases. - Package installation configuration for the frameworks you want. - Container/VM configuration for the languages you want to enable cross-platform and future-proof development. - Documentation to get started with it all.
meddlepal 7y ago
This is a great improvement. The inability to fork within an organization always made bootstrapping new projects from a template just ever so slightly too annoying.
jsilence 7y ago
Would love to see templates for reproducible science.
- pjbull 7y ago
  Check out: https://drivendata.github.io/cookiecutter-data-science/ https://drivendata.github.io/cookiecutter-data-science/ Not a GitHub template, but hits a lot of the same use cases.
  - jsilence 7y ago
    Thanks! Looks good. Is there anything against this being also a github template?
praveenweb 7y ago
This is useful for boilerplate code. But keeping it in sync with upstream isn’t possible due to it having a single initial commit and separate history. For that a fork is the only choice. I see how the use cases can pan out for templates. Glad that Github is releasing more features off late :)
- RyJones 7y ago
  Agreed. Even as limited as it is it's a great feature
edjrage 7y ago
I don't understand. What's the difference between this and just cloning (not forking) a repo? If it's the same, why not just add a button called "clone" that appears in _all_ repos?
- tyrust 7y ago
  The biggest benefit will probably be for new programmers following a tutorial that provides a template. The word "clone" means nothing to them. They just want to copy and build off of this project on their own GitHub. Yes, it does sacrifice some learning about git, but once you get someone hooked on programming they will be able to learn the tools later.
  - phreack 7y ago
    I don't get it either, is it literally the same thing a a a clone with a different name?
    - imran3740 7y ago
      No, this does not preserve the history of the repo, just gives a single commit with the existing files. You might also think of this as cloning, then squashing down the entire history (well, everything in master anyways) to a single (root) commit.
      - RyJones 7y ago
        Maybe I remember incorrectly, but I thought the template came from the default branch?
      - phreack 7y ago
        Oh I get it now, thanks!
    - AtlasBarfed 7y ago
      Templates are a copy of a non empty word document Cloning is a word document with versions turned on that copied all the previous versioning information
RyJones 7y ago
I played with this this week. I like it! I wish it kept the branch protection rules and the like if the new repo is in the same org, but overall, good times
muzzio 7y ago
Sounds pretty awesome. I'd especially love it if frameworks like Spring offered releases via this channel. I'd be curious to see how composability works with this, too: if for instance I wanted to make a React+Rails boilerplate, it'd be awesome if users could cherry-pick a commit to use it with their Bugsnag+Rails boilerplate.
sthielen 7y ago
This is awesome! I've been working on something similar with Koji [0], with the added twist of taking templates for full stack (web) apps and cloning remote dev environments + production deployment pipelines alongside the code. It's been especially valuable for more junior devs/people just getting started to be able to "play" and remix an app instead of trying to start building from scratch. Especially when some of them have never even heard the word "repository" before. There's a lot of interesting stuff that comes when thinking about these kinds of templates from the level of fully-baked products instead of just lower-level components like frameworks and libraries. Excited to see where Github is headed with all of these recent feature releases. [0] - https://gokoji.com https://gokoji.com
- pault 7y ago
  Here is some constructive feedback. A few things that I wanted to see when I looked at the website: a "how it works" page with technical information; an explanation of how multi-environment templates with deployment pipelines work; ability to view the template source before I deploy. From 60 seconds browsing the site (which is about how long someone will spend before closing the tab and moving on) I can't tell exactly what the project does (what is the local dev environment like? How does deployment work? Is it self hosted? Does it support cloud deployments?), and looking at the details page for a template doesn't let me preview the source or see what the components are. For example, the microblogging template; what language is it written in? What does it use for a server? Does it use frameworks for the client and back-end? Does it use a database? I have literally no idea what will happen if I click on the "Use Template" button, and I'm unlikely to create an account just to find out.
  - sthielen 7y ago
    I really appreciate your taking a look and writing all of that up. We're only a month or so into public beta, so a lot of things (mainly on that technical documentation side that you mentioned) are still missing. We've been heavily focused on enabling non-technical people, or very early beginners, to use the platform as creators, so we've been a little hesitant to overwhelm them with technical things that might scare them off or make it seem like this isn't a tool for them. That being said, you're absolutely right that it's a huge piece of this (and arguably the most important piece for a certain audience) and part of a balance we need to find moving forward. If you're curious about the answers to those questions, there's a low-level technical writeup on this page [0] that I'm working on incorporating somewhere into the actual product/landing page. [0] - https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/companies/koji-web-app-development-platform https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/companies/koji-web-app-develo...
marvion 7y ago
It's nice to have, but it does feel super limited with tools like https://github.com/tmrts/boilr https://github.com/tmrts/boilr or https://github.com/audreyr/cookiecutter https://github.com/audreyr/cookiecutter which allows to generate customized files/directories via variables and conditions.

146 points by mxstbr 7y ago

oracle2025 7y ago

I've been using cookiecutter for this mostly. But in general I feel like excessive boilerplate is more like a code smell. Reusable code should live in libraries, and frameworks should have sane defaults and configuration be kept to a minimum.

l0b0 7y ago

This is a part of something which could become a very powerful pattern: community-wide templates which include many best practices in a single commit: - Pre-commit hooks for linting/formatting and unit tests. - Basic CI pipeline configuration with at least build, test and release/deploy phases. - Package installation configuration for the frameworks you want. - Container/VM configuration for the languages you want to enable cross-platform and future-proof development. - Documentation to get started with it all.

meddlepal 7y ago

This is a great improvement. The inability to fork within an organization always made bootstrapping new projects from a template just ever so slightly too annoying.

jsilence 7y ago

Would love to see templates for reproducible science.

pjbull 7y ago
Check out: https://drivendata.github.io/cookiecutter-data-science/ https://drivendata.github.io/cookiecutter-data-science/ Not a GitHub template, but hits a lot of the same use cases.
- jsilence 7y ago
  Thanks! Looks good. Is there anything against this being also a github template?

praveenweb 7y ago

This is useful for boilerplate code. But keeping it in sync with upstream isn’t possible due to it having a single initial commit and separate history. For that a fork is the only choice. I see how the use cases can pan out for templates. Glad that Github is releasing more features off late :)

RyJones 7y ago
Agreed. Even as limited as it is it's a great feature

edjrage 7y ago

I don't understand. What's the difference between this and just cloning (not forking) a repo? If it's the same, why not just add a button called "clone" that appears in _all_ repos?

tyrust 7y ago
The biggest benefit will probably be for new programmers following a tutorial that provides a template. The word "clone" means nothing to them. They just want to copy and build off of this project on their own GitHub. Yes, it does sacrifice some learning about git, but once you get someone hooked on programming they will be able to learn the tools later.
- phreack 7y ago
  I don't get it either, is it literally the same thing a a a clone with a different name?
  - imran3740 7y ago
    No, this does not preserve the history of the repo, just gives a single commit with the existing files. You might also think of this as cloning, then squashing down the entire history (well, everything in master anyways) to a single (root) commit.
    - RyJones 7y ago
      Maybe I remember incorrectly, but I thought the template came from the default branch?
    - phreack 7y ago
      Oh I get it now, thanks!
  - AtlasBarfed 7y ago
    Templates are a copy of a non empty word document Cloning is a word document with versions turned on that copied all the previous versioning information

RyJones 7y ago

I played with this this week. I like it! I wish it kept the branch protection rules and the like if the new repo is in the same org, but overall, good times

muzzio 7y ago

Sounds pretty awesome. I'd especially love it if frameworks like Spring offered releases via this channel. I'd be curious to see how composability works with this, too: if for instance I wanted to make a React+Rails boilerplate, it'd be awesome if users could cherry-pick a commit to use it with their Bugsnag+Rails boilerplate.

sthielen 7y ago

This is awesome! I've been working on something similar with Koji [0], with the added twist of taking templates for full stack (web) apps and cloning remote dev environments + production deployment pipelines alongside the code. It's been especially valuable for more junior devs/people just getting started to be able to "play" and remix an app instead of trying to start building from scratch. Especially when some of them have never even heard the word "repository" before. There's a lot of interesting stuff that comes when thinking about these kinds of templates from the level of fully-baked products instead of just lower-level components like frameworks and libraries. Excited to see where Github is headed with all of these recent feature releases. [0] - https://gokoji.com https://gokoji.com

pault 7y ago
Here is some constructive feedback. A few things that I wanted to see when I looked at the website: a "how it works" page with technical information; an explanation of how multi-environment templates with deployment pipelines work; ability to view the template source before I deploy. From 60 seconds browsing the site (which is about how long someone will spend before closing the tab and moving on) I can't tell exactly what the project does (what is the local dev environment like? How does deployment work? Is it self hosted? Does it support cloud deployments?), and looking at the details page for a template doesn't let me preview the source or see what the components are. For example, the microblogging template; what language is it written in? What does it use for a server? Does it use frameworks for the client and back-end? Does it use a database? I have literally no idea what will happen if I click on the "Use Template" button, and I'm unlikely to create an account just to find out.
- sthielen 7y ago
  I really appreciate your taking a look and writing all of that up. We're only a month or so into public beta, so a lot of things (mainly on that technical documentation side that you mentioned) are still missing. We've been heavily focused on enabling non-technical people, or very early beginners, to use the platform as creators, so we've been a little hesitant to overwhelm them with technical things that might scare them off or make it seem like this isn't a tool for them. That being said, you're absolutely right that it's a huge piece of this (and arguably the most important piece for a certain audience) and part of a balance we need to find moving forward. If you're curious about the answers to those questions, there's a low-level technical writeup on this page [0] that I'm working on incorporating somewhere into the actual product/landing page. [0] - https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/companies/koji-web-app-development-platform https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/companies/koji-web-app-develo...

marvion 7y ago

It's nice to have, but it does feel super limited with tools like https://github.com/tmrts/boilr https://github.com/tmrts/boilr or https://github.com/audreyr/cookiecutter https://github.com/audreyr/cookiecutter which allows to generate customized files/directories via variables and conditions.