Repo File Sync Action

Keep files like Action workflows or entire directories in sync between multiple repositories.

👋 Introduction

With repo-file-sync-action you can sync files, like workflow .yml files, configuration files or whole directories between repositories. It works by running a GitHub Action in your main repository everytime you push something to that repo. The action will use a sync.yml config file to figure out which files it should sync where. If it finds a file which is out of sync it will open a pull request in the target repository with the changes.

🚀 Features

• Keep GitHub Actions workflow files in sync across all your repositories
• Sync any file or a whole directory to as many repositories as you want
• Easy configuration for any use case
• Create a pull request in the target repo so you have the last say on what gets merged
• Automatically label pull requests to integrate with other actions like automerge-action
• Assign users to the pull request

📚 Usage

Create a .yml file in your .github/workflows folder (you can find more info about the structure in the GitHub Docs):

.github/workflows/sync.yml

name: Sync Files
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master
  workflow_dispatch:
jobs:
  sync:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout Repository
        uses: actions/checkout@master
      - name: Run GitHub File Sync
        uses: BetaHuhn/repo-file-sync-action@v1
        with:
          GH_PAT: ${{ secrets.GH_PAT }}

In order for the Action to access your repositories you have to specify a Personal Access token as the value for GH_PAT.

Note: GITHUB_TOKEN will not work

It is recommneded to set the token as a Repository Secret.

The last step is to create a .yml file in the .github folder of your repository and specify what file(s) to sync to which repositories:

.github/sync.yml

user/repository:
  - .github/workflows/test.yml
  - .github/workflows/lint.yml

user/repository2:
  - source: workflows/stale.yml
    dest: .github/workflows/stale.yml

More info on how to specify what files to sync where below.

⚙️ Action Inputs

Here are all the inputs repo-file-sync-action takes:

Key	Value	Required	Default
GH_PAT	Your Personal Access token	Yes	N/A
CONFIG_PATH	Path to the sync configuration file	No	.github/sync.yml
PR_LABELS	Labels which will be added to the pull request. Set to false to turn off	No	sync
ASSIGNEES	People to assign to the pull request	No	N/A
COMMIT_PREFIX	Prefix for commit message and pull request title	No	🔄
COMMIT_EACH_FILE	Commit each file seperately	No	true
GIT_EMAIL	The e-mail address used to commit the synced files	No	the email of the PAT used
GIT_USERNAME	The username used to commit the synced files	No	the username of the PAT used
TMP_DIR	The working directory where all git operations will be done	No	tmp-${ Date.now().toString() }
DRY_RUN	Run everything except that nothing will be pushed	No	false
SKIP_CLEANUP	Skips removing the temporary directory. Useful for debugging	No	false

🛠️ Sync Configuration

In order to tell repo-file-sync-action what files to sync where, you have to create a sync.yml file in the .github directory of your main repository (see action-inputs on how to change the location).

The top-level key should be used to specify the target repository in the format username/repository-name@branch, after that you can list all the files you want to sync to that individual repository:

user/repo:
  - path/to/file.txt
user/repo2@develop:
  - path/to/file2.txt

There are multiple ways to specify which files to sync to each individual repository.

List individual file(s)

The easiest way to sync files is the list them on a new line for each repository:

user/repo:
  - .github/workflows/build.yml
  - LICENSE
  - .gitignore

Different destination path/filename(s)

Using the dest option you can specify a destination path in the target repo and/or change the filename for each source file:

user/repo:
  - source: workflows/build.yml
    dest: .github/workflows/build.yml
  - source: LICENSE.md
    dest: LICENSE

Sync entire directories

You can also specify entire directories to sync:

user/repo:
  - source: workflows/
    dest: .github/workflows/

Don't replace existing file(s)

By default if a file already exists in the target repository, it will be replaced. You can change this behaviour by setting the replace option to false:

user/repo:
  - source: .github/workflows/lint.yml
    replace: false

Sync the same files to multiple repositories

Instead of repeating yourself listing the same files for multiple repositories, you can create a group:

group:
  repos: |
    user/repo
    user/repo1    
  files: 
    - source: workflows/build.yml
      dest: .github/workflows/build.yml
    - source: LICENSE.md
      dest: LICENSE

You can create multiple groups like this:

group:
  # first group
  - files:
      - source: workflows/build.yml
        dest: .github/workflows/build.yml
      - source: LICENSE.md
        dest: LICENSE
    repos: |
      user/repo1
      user/repo2      

  # second group
  - files: 
      - source: configs/dependabot.yml
        dest: .github/dependabot.yml
    repos: |
      user/repo3
      user/repo4      

📖 Examples

Here are a few examples to help you get started!

Basic Example

.github/sync.yml

user/repository:
  - LICENSE
  - .gitignore

Sync all workflow files

This example will keep all your .github/workflows files in sync across multiple repositories:

.github/sync.yml

group:
  repos: |
    user/repo1
    user/repo2    
  files:
    - source: .github/workflows/
      dest: .github/workflows/

Custom labels

By default repo-file-sync-action will add the sync label to every PR it creates. You can turn this off by setting PR_LABELS to false, or specify your own labels:

.github/workflows/sync.yml

- name: Run GitHub File Sync
  uses: BetaHuhn/repo-file-sync-action@v1
  with:
    GH_PAT: ${{ secrets.GH_PAT }}
    PR_LABELS: |
      file-sync
      automerge      

Assign a user to the PR

You can tell repo-file-sync-action to assign users to the PR with ASSIGNEES:

.github/workflows/sync.yml

- name: Run GitHub File Sync
  uses: BetaHuhn/repo-file-sync-action@v1
  with:
    GH_PAT: ${{ secrets.GH_PAT }}
    ASSIGNEES: BetaHuhn

Advanced sync config

Here's how I keep common files in sync across my repositories. The main repository github-files contains all the files I want to sync and the repo-file-sync-action Action which runs on every push.

Using groups I can specify which file(s) should be synced to which repositories:

.github/sync.yml

group:
  # dependabot files
  - files:
      - source: configs/dependabot.yml
        dest: .github/dependabot.yml
      - source: workflows/dependencies/dependabot.yml
        dest: .github/workflows/dependabot.yml
    repos: |
      BetaHuhn/do-spaces-action
      BetaHuhn/running-at
      BetaHuhn/spaces-cli
      BetaHuhn/metadata-scraper
      BetaHuhn/ejs-serve
      BetaHuhn/feedback-js
      BetaHuhn/drkmd.js      

  # GitHub Sponsors config
  - files:
      - source: configs/FUNDING.yml
        dest: .github/FUNDING.yml
    repos: |
      BetaHuhn/do-spaces-action
      BetaHuhn/running-at
      BetaHuhn/spaces-cli
      BetaHuhn/qrgen
      BetaHuhn/metadata-scraper
      BetaHuhn/ejs-serve
      BetaHuhn/feedback-js
      BetaHuhn/drkmd.js      

  # Semantic release
  - files:
      - source: workflows/versioning/release-scheduler.yml
        dest: .github/workflows/release-scheduler.yml
      - source: workflows/versioning/release.yml
        dest: .github/workflows/release.yml
      - source: configs/release.config.js
        dest: release.config.js
    repos: |
      BetaHuhn/do-spaces-action
      BetaHuhn/metadata-scraper
      BetaHuhn/feedback-js
      BetaHuhn/drkmd.js      

  # Stale issues workflow
  - files:
      - source: workflows/issues/stale.yml
        dest: .github/workflows/stale.yml
    repos: |
      BetaHuhn/do-spaces-action
      BetaHuhn/running-at
      BetaHuhn/spaces-cli
      BetaHuhn/qrgen
      BetaHuhn/metadata-scraper
      BetaHuhn/ejs-serve
      BetaHuhn/feedback-js
      BetaHuhn/drkmd.js      

  # Lint CI workflow
  - files:
      - source: workflows/node/lint.yml
        dest: .github/workflows/lint.yml
    repos: |
      BetaHuhn/do-spaces-action
      BetaHuhn/running-at
      BetaHuhn/spaces-cli
      BetaHuhn/metadata-scraper
      BetaHuhn/ejs-serve
      BetaHuhn/feedback-js
      BetaHuhn/drkmd.js      

  # MIT License
  - files:
      - source: LICENSE
        dest: LICENSE
    repos: |
      BetaHuhn/do-spaces-action
      BetaHuhn/running-at
      BetaHuhn/spaces-cli
      BetaHuhn/qrgen
      BetaHuhn/metadata-scraper
      BetaHuhn/ejs-serve
      BetaHuhn/feedback-js
      BetaHuhn/drkmd.js      

💻 Development

Issues and PRs are very welcome!

The actual source code of this library is in the src folder.

• run yarn lint or npm run lint to run eslint.
• run yarn start or npm run start to run the Action locally.
• run yarn build or npm run build to produce a production version of repo-file-sync-action in the dist folder.

❔ About

This project was developed by me (@betahuhn) in my free time. If you want to support me:

Credits

This Action was inspired by:

• action-github-workflow-sync
• files-sync-action

📄 License

Copyright 2021 Maximilian Schiller

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