It is possible to create repositories within Github with GitHub templates. This is a nice approach to have some boilerplate within your repository. Over the time the template repository will get some code changes. The problem is that the already created repositories won't know about those changes. This GitHub action will help you to keep track of the template changes.

• Sync template repository with the current repository
• Ignore files and folders from syncing using a .templatesyncignore file

Add this configuration to your github action

# File: .github/workflows/template-sync.yml

on:
    # cronjob trigger
  schedule:
  - cron:  "0 0 1 * *"
  # manual trigger
  workflow_dispatch:
jobs:
  repo-sync:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      # To use this repository's private action, you must check out the repository
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - name: actions-template-sync
        uses: AndreasAugustin/[email protected]
        with:
          github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          source_repo_path: <owner/repo>
          upstream_branch: <target_branch> # defaults to main
          pr_labels: <label1>,<label2>[,...] # defaults to chore,template-sync

You will receive a pull request within your repository if there are some changes available.

This repo uses this template and this action from the marketplace. See the definition here

You can use all triggers which are supported for GitHub actions

If you have a private template repository.

You have various options to use ssh keys with GitHub. An example are deployment keys. For our use case write permissions are not needed. Within the repository where the GitHub action is enabled add a secret (e.q. SOURCE_REPO_SSH_PRIVATE_KEY) with the content of your private SSH key. Make sure that the read permissions of that secret fulfil your use case. Set the optional source_repo_ssh_private_key input parameter.

jobs:
  repo-sync:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      # To use this repository's private action, you must check out the repository
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - name: actions-template-sync
        uses: AndreasAugustin/[email protected]
        with:
          github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          source_repo_path: ${{ secrets.SOURCE_REPO_PATH }} # <owner/repo>, should be within secrets
          upstream_branch: ${{ secrets.TARGET_BRANCH }} #<target_branch> # defaults to main
          pr_labels: <label1>,<label2>[,...] # defaults to chore,template-sync
          source_repo_ssh_private_key: ${{ secrets.SOURCE_REPO_SSH_PRIVATE_KEY }} # contains the private ssh key of the private repository

Create a .templatesyncignore file. Just like writing a .gitignore file, follow the glob pattern in defining the files and folders that should be excluded from syncing with the template repository.

You must create a secret named ACTIONS_STEP_DEBUG with the value true to see the debug messages set by this command in the log. For more information, see "Enabling debug logging."

The development environment targets are located in the Makefile

make help

Thanks goes to these wonderful people (emoji key):

andy Augustin 📖 💻 👀 🛡️	Ugo Pattacini 📖	Jose Gabrielle Rivera 💻	P.D. Rittenhouse 🤔	Daniel Boll 🐛	albertschwarzkopf 🤔	Akul Pillai 🛡️
Stefan Riembauer 🤔	Fabrizio Cacicia 🛡️ 🐛

This project follows the all-contributors specification. Contributions of any kind welcome!