degit — straightforward project scaffolding

degit makes copies of git repositories. When you run degit some-user/some-repo, it will find the latest commit on https://github.com/some-user/some-repo and download the associated tar file to ~/.degit/some-user/some-repo/commithash.tar.gz if it doesn't already exist locally. (This is much quicker than using git clone, because you're not downloading the entire git history.)

You can specify a specific branch, tag or commit hash...

degit some-user/some-repo#some-feature # branch
degit some-user/some-repo#v1.0.0       # tag
degit some-user/some-repo#1234abcd     # commit hash

...or create a new folder for the project...

degit some-user/some-repo my-new-project

...and that's it. As simple as possible, and no simpler.

Installation

npm install -g degit

Not supported

• Private repositories

Pull requests are very welcome!

Wait, isn't this just git clone --depth 1?

A few salient differences:

• If you git clone, you get a .git folder that pertains to the project template, rather than your project. You can easily forget to re-init the repository, and end up confusing yourself
• Caching and offline support (if you already have a .tar.gz file for a specific commit, you don't need to fetch it again).
• Less to type (degit user/repo instead of git clone --depth 1 git@github.com:user/repo)
• Future capabilities — interactive mode, friendly onboarding and postinstall scripts

See also

• zel by Vu Tran
• gittar by Luke Edwards

License

MIT.