gc-rust a GitHub clone helper

gc-rust is a tiny Rust application that allows you to clone GitHub repositories with ease to a predetermined location.

As an original Go developer, I liked the idea that my code was organized in the form of:

~/go/src/github.com/<username>/<repository>

So I kept maintaining even non-Go projects in the same way.

This is where gc-rust comes in handy. Given a GitHub repository URL, it will perform the git clone operation by finding the appropriate location for the resulting folder.

For example, given the repository:

github.com/example/application

It will correctly create the folder structure so the repository is cloned to:

~/go/src/github.com/example/application

If there was a preexistent folder, it will ask you if you want to overwrite it. This will destroy any prior content in the destination folder!

Usage

To clone the repository, you can run any of the following:

gc-rust git@github.com:example/application.git
gc-rust github.com/example/application
gc-rust example/application
gc-rust https://github.com/example/application
gc-rust https://github.com/example/application/issues
gc-rust https://github.com/example/application/security/dependabot
gc-rust https://github.com/example/application/this/is/a/made/up/path

All of them will detect the repository being github.com/example/application and clone it to the correct location.

The output of gc-rust will all be printed to stderr with one exception: the folder location where it was cloned. This is useful if you want to create a function that both clones a repository and then cd into it:

function gc() {
  if ! type "gc-rust" > /dev/null; then
    echo -e "Install gc-rust first from github.com/patrickdappollonio/gc-rust"
    exit 1
  fi

  cd "$(gc-rust "$@")" || return
}

With this in your bashrc or bash_profile, you can now simply run gc and it will clone the repository and cd into it:

$ pwd
/home/patrick/go/src/github.com/patrickdappollonio/gc-rust

$ gc https://github.com/patrickdappollonio/http-server
 Cloning patrickdappollonio/http-server...
Cloning into '/home/patrick/Golang/src/github.com/patrickdappollonio/http-server'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 848, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (228/228), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (156/156), done.
remote: Total 848 (delta 183), reused 72 (delta 72), pack-reused 620 (from 1)
Receiving objects: 100% (848/848), 4.11 MiB | 17.99 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (469/469), done.
 Successfully cloned patrickdappollonio/http-server into /home/patrick/Golang/src/github.com/patrickdappollonio/http-server

$ pwd
/home/patrick/go/src/github.com/patrickdappollonio/http-server

Defining a location for the repositories

By default, gc-rust will clone the repositories to the path defined in the environment variable $GC_DOWNLOAD_PATH. If this variable is not set, it will use the $GOPATH environment variable since the original idea came from Go project management. If neither are defined you'll see an error.

Specifying a branch

Contrary to what you might think, gc-rust will not deduce a branch name from the URL. Instead, it will clone using whatever branch is currently set as the default in the repository. If you want to clone a specific branch, you can do so by specifying the -b or --branch flag:

# this will clone `patrickdappollonio/http-server` into the `feature-branch` branch,
# and not the branch called `example` (as seen by the URL)
gc-rust https://github.com/patrickdappollonio/http-server/tree/example -b feature-branch