npm-package

Copy file / folder from Git repo without cloning

Copy a file or folder from a Git repo instead of cloning, i.e. without a connection to the source

Changes in the original repo will not affect the copy of the file / folder and vice versa.

Helpful to reuse specific contents of another repo in a current one without mixing both repos.

hh lohmann <hh.lohmann@gmail.com>

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Caution

• Does not check if a file / folder with the same name already exists in your target - this is up to you, especially in case you explicitly want to overwrite / reset existing files (cf. Details)

Synopsis

  import { gitCopyFileFolder } from 'git-copy-file-folder'

  gitCopyFileFolder( sourceRepo, fileOrFolder)

  gitCopyFileFolder( sourceRepo, fileOrFolder, targetPath )

Parameters

sourceRepo

URL of the repo from which fileOrFolder should be copied

fileOrFolder

Name / path for the file / folder to be copied from the sourceRepo

• Interpreted relative to the source repo’s root, i.e. src/index.js of repo x would be x/src/index.js

targetPath

Optional: Existing path to which fileOrFolder should be copied to

• Default: current folder

Returns

• true on success, false else

Examples

  gitCopyFileFolder(
    'https://github.com/acmecorp/solve-all-problems',
    'secretsolutions'
  )

  gitCopyFileFolder(
    'https://github.com/acmecorp/solve-all-problems',
    'secretsolutions/solution-42.js',
    'ripped-stuff/acme/'
  )

Installation

Pick for your preferred package manager:

  npm i git-copy-file-folder

  pnpm i git-copy-file-folder

  bun i git-copy-file-folder

  # For Yarn you should double check docs for your and / or
  # current Yarn version, newer versions do not treat `i package_name`
  # as an alias for `add ...` and exclude global installations
  yarn add git-copy-file-folder

Details

• Only one file / folder per call (multiple files / folders or globbing goes beyond the current time budget for this project)

• Does not check if a file / folder with the same name already exists in your target before probably overwriting it, partly for simplicity, partly to give surrounding code full control about e.g. deciding if overwriting an old version with a newer one or a diverged / corrupted version with the original one may be explicitly intended.

• Copying takes place via a temporary sparse clone and a sparse-checkout there (deleted after copying the file / folder requested)

Tests

• Code tests to be run with Node.js / Bun available in Source Code

Source Code

• GitHub: https://github.com/hh-lohmann/git-copy-file-folder

License

• See LICENSE file included here and in Source Code

References

Git: clone sparse

• https://git-scm.com/docs/git-clone#Documentation/git-clone.txt---sparse

Git: sparse-checkout

• https://git-scm.com/docs/git-sparse-checkout

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