COPYCAT

GitHub Action for copying files to other repositories.

This is a GitHub action to copy files from your repository to another external repository. It is also possible to copy files from/to repository Wikis.

This action runs in a Docker container and therefore only supports Linux.

Usage

The following example workflow step will copy all files from the repository running the action, to a folder named backup in the destination repo copycat-action. If the files already exist at the destination repo, they will be overwritten.

- name: Copy
  uses: andstor/copycat-action@v3
  with:
    personal_token: ${{ secrets.PERSONAL_TOKEN }}
    src_path: /.
    dst_path: /backup/
    dst_owner: andstor
    dst_repo_name: copycat-action

Options ⚙️

The following input variable options can/must be configured:

Input variable	Necessity	Description	Default
src_path	Required	The source path to the file(s) or folder(s) to copy from. For example /. or path/to/home.md.
dst_path	Optional	The destination path to copy the file(s) or folder(s) to. For example /wiki/ or path/to/index.md.	src_path
dst_owner	Required	The name of the owner of the repository to push to. For example andstor.
dst_repo_name	Required	The name of the repository to push to. For example copycat-action.
src_branch	Optional	The name of the branch in source repository to clone from.	master
dst_branch	Optional	The name of the branch in the destination repository to push to. If the branch doesn't exists, the branch will be created based on the default branch.	master
clean	Optional	Set to true if the dst_path should be emptied before copying.	false
file_filter	Optional	A simple pattern for filtering files to be copied. Acts on file basename. For example *.sh.
filter	Optional	A glob pattern for filtering files to be copied. Acts on file paths. For example **/!(*.*).
exclude	Optional	A glob pattern for excluding paths. For example */tests/*.
src_wiki	Optional	Set to true if the source repository you want to copy from is the GitHub Wiki.	false
dst_wiki	Optional	Set to true if the destination repository you want to copy from is the GitHub Wiki.	false
commit_message	Optional	A custom git commit message.
username	Optional	The GitHub username to associate commits made by this GitHub action.	GITHUB_ACTOR
email	Optional	The email used for associating commits made by this GitHub action.	GITHUB_ACTOR @users.noreply.github.com

Secrets

• personal_token: (required) GitHub Private Access Token used for the clone/push operations. To create it follow the GitHub Documentation.

Filtering

Copycat provides several ways of filtering which files you want to copy.
All three types of filtering can be applied simultaneously.

Input variables

file_filter

The file_filterinput variable allows you to filter file basenames. Hence, you can for example only copy all text files by setting file_filterto *.txt. The variable only accepts simple patterns.

filter

The filter input variable provides extensive globbing support. It also supports extended globbing and globstar. The globbing applies to file paths. So, to for example match all files that doesn't have a file extention, the pattern could look like **/!(*.*).

exclude

The exclude input variable can be used to exclude certain paths. It will apply to the file paths. One are for example able to exclude certain deirectory names. Setting exclude to */tests/* results in only copying files that don't lie inside a folder named tests (both directly and indirectly). Here, a file with for example the path foo/tests/bar/baz.txt would not be copied over.

Examples

Copy wiki files to external repo

This workflow configuration will copy all files from the repository's wiki to a folder named wiki in the destination repo andstor.github.io.

This can for example be used to merge several wikies of an organisation, and display them on a custom GitHub Pages site. The Jekyll theme Paper has support for this.

name: Copy
on: gollum
jobs:
  copy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - name: Copycat
      uses: andstor/copycat-action@v3
      with:
        personal_token: ${{ secrets.PERSONAL_TOKEN }}
        src_path: /.
        dst_path: /wiki/
        dst_owner: andstor
        dst_repo_name: andstor.github.io
        dst_branch: master
        src_branch: master
        src_wiki: true
        dst_wiki: false
        username: nutsbot
        email: [email protected]

Author

The Copycat GitHub action is written by André Storhaug [email protected]

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.