My first post of 📛 Improving a GitHub Repo describes many good things to add in any GitHub repository to be more productive and professional. However, that stuff can be hard to do every time a new repository is created, and we can forget to add something great. I found a way to accelerate this process and also do not forget to add anything great: GitHub Repository templates.

GitHub template repository is the best way to replicate an standard structure, including folders, documentation, workflows, branches, and any file required to set up a new project. Using this pattern we can homogenize the structure of any repository of your organization, or also your own projects, easily and saving a lot of time. If you need to standardize your projects, or you need to create many projects on demand, definitely a template repository is your tool.

As summary, the most great benefits of using repository template I found are:

• ⌛ Spend less time repeating code
• 🌟 Focus on building new things
• 🦾 Less manual configuration
• 📝 Sharing boilerplate code across the code base

And, the main features of a repository template are:

• Copy the entire repository files to a brand new repository
• Every template has a new url endpoint called /generate
• Share repository template through your organization or other GitHub users

My own repository template

I create mw own GitHub Template repository in here: https://github.com/rmarting/gh-repo-template including all the things described in my previous post, or new things added along the time.

My template repository includes things such as:

• Initial content files aligned with the common patterns in any Open Source project: Contribution guide, Code of Conduct, contributors, …
• GitHub templates to report issues or open Pull Requests.
• Standard badges to summarize the repository.
• Standard workflows to release versions, or to implement Continuous Integration pipelines

So, creating a new repository and setting up it takes few seconds and steps. Amazing!!!

Do you have ideas, or comments about how to improve a template repository? Looking forward to hearing you with more contributions into my template repo, or adding comments in this post.

🤖🚩 Happy creation of new projects!!! 🤖🚩