Repo Sync

GitHub Action to sync repositories (push to another repo when push detected on current repo)

Usage

GitHub Way

1. Create Personal Access Token (PAT) with public_repo scope (if your target repo is a private repo, you need a private scope use repo instead)
2. Save PAT as secret named RS_PAT by going to GitHub -> Repo -> Settings -> Secrets -> New reposirory secret
3. Create a secret named RS_TARGET with your target repo name in org/repo format e.g. Anthonykung/RepoSync
4. Create a new GitHub action Workflow by GitHub -> Repo -> Actions -> New workflow -> set up a workflow yourself
5. Copy and paste the following to the text area
6. Rename the file to RepoSync.yml
7. Hit save and be done!

name: AnthRepoSync
on: 
  push:
    # Remove the `#` below if you only want a specific branch, leave it for all pushes
    # branches:
    # - main
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  RepoSync:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: AnthRepoSync
        uses: Anthonykung/[email protected]
        with:
          RS_TARGET: ${{ secrets.RS_TARGET }}
          RS_PAT: ${{ secrets.RS_PAT }}

Workflow Way

1. Create Personal Access Token (PAT) with public_repo scope (if your target repo is a private repo, you need a private scope use repo instead)
2. Save PAT as secret named RS_PAT by going to GitHub -> Repo -> Settings -> Secrets -> New reposirory secret
3. If you use a branch that is not main, you will need to update RepoSync.yml with your branch name e.g. master (sorry they don't let me use secrets 😭)
4. Create a secret named RS_TARGET with your target repo name in org/repo format e.g. Anthonykung/RepoSync
5. Sit back and relex, check if the action successfully completes, otherwise you can grab that cup of coffee (or tea) now 😉.

Use Case

Of course, why is something boring like this useful? Well, imagine you have a GitHub profile say Anthonykung/Anthonykung but you also publish it on a GitHub.io page for no reason at Anthonykung/Anthonykung.github.io. And you are too lazy to pull the repo and add a new upstream, then this action is very useful in that case. All the pushes to Anthonykung/Anthonykung will by sync automatically to Anthonykung/Anthonykung.github.io and you don't have to do a thing.

Sure, you can create a GitHub page directly in the directory and skip this (pretty sure I'll eventually do that 😶) but say if you have a project that requires you to sync two or more repo and since the repos would basically be the same so there is no point to use a submodule and you work with random people that may or may not remember to add a upstream then this should help. Whenever people push, no matter they remember to add upstream or not, it will sync your other repo.

Customization

You can add multiple target repo if you would like just add more of theses:

      - name: Get target repo
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          repository: ${{ secrets.RS_TARGET }}
          token: ${{ secrets.RS_PAT }}
          path: target

Under the line # You can add more targets if you want like so:

      - name: Get target repo
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          repository: ${{ secrets.RS_TARGET }}  # Create a secret with your GitHub repo in org/repo format e.g. Anthonykung/RepoSync
          token: ${{ secrets.RS_PAT }}  # Create a PAT with public repo access and put it as a secret named PUBLIC_GITHUB_REPO
          path: target                              # (GitHub -> Repo -> Settings -> Secrets -> New repository secret)
          
      # You can add more targets if you want
      
      - name: Get target repo
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          repository: ${{ secrets.RS_TARGET }}
          token: ${{ secrets.RS_PAT }}
          path: target2
          
      - name: Get target repo
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          repository: ${{ secrets.RS_TARGET }}
          token: ${{ secrets.RS_PAT }}
          path: target3

And don't forget to update the script to include the other targets like this:

      - name: Copy source to target and push
        run: |
          git config user.name github-actions
          git config user.email [email protected]
          rsync -r --exclude '.git' $GITHUB_WORKSPACE/source/* $GITHUB_WORKSPACE/target
          rsync -r --exclude '.git' $GITHUB_WORKSPACE/source/* $GITHUB_WORKSPACE/target2
          rsync -r --exclude '.git' $GITHUB_WORKSPACE/source/* $GITHUB_WORKSPACE/target3
          cd $GITHUB_WORKSPACE/target && git add -A && git commit -am "Generated update from RepoSync GitHub Action" && git push
          cd $GITHUB_WORKSPACE/target2 && git add -A && git commit -am "Generated update from RepoSync GitHub Action" && git push
          cd $GITHUB_WORKSPACE/target3 && git add -A && git commit -am "Generated update from RepoSync GitHub Action" && git push

Of course, you can use your imagination and have something else that does the same thing, I'll leave that up to you 😉.