How to push directly to the target repositories

[N6REJ]

I'm sorry to keep bothering you.. it's still saying there are syntax errors. I must be blind.

I made the changes you told me too ( which phpstorm hates )

[Here's my repo'(https://github.com/Bearsampp/.settings)

[N6REJ]

fixed that error.. forgot to commit but then it said I can't use the secret name I used, so fixed that but then I get this..

[BetaHuhn]

Repos that contain special characters like a dot are not allowed as branch names, see #32.

You need to manually specify a branch prefix.

This is not really your fault, I don't think the branch name limitation is documented well in the README

[N6REJ]

ok, tried a couple of things..
first I used

but that doesn't really make any sense ( and the test proved it ) as it's the repo name that has the . not the branch.

And, I added @main for website because it said it couldn't find "default" branch, which there isn't one named default ( I assume its look for the one assigned as default )

[BetaHuhn]

SOURCE_REPO_NAME will be replaced with the name of the source repository, so using it as the branch prefix doesn't go around the problem, the new branch will still have the dot from your repo's title in it.

You could change the BRANCH_PREFIX to a different string, like repo-sync and the resulting branch would be repo-sync/default for example.

You don't need to change the branch to main, the default is not the name of an existing branch, but a new one that will be created.

[N6REJ]

SOURCE_REPO_NAME will be replaced with the name of the source repository, so using it as the branch prefix doesn't go around the problem, the new branch will still have the dot from your repo's title in it.

You could change the BRANCH_PREFIX to a different string, like repo-sync and the resulting branch would be repo-sync/default for example.

You don't need to change the branch to main, the default is not the name of an existing branch, but a new one that will be created.

so the bottom line is we can't have a repo with a "." name?

[BetaHuhn]

Again, yes you can.

By default it creates a new branch in the following format repo-sync/SOURCE_REPO_NAME/SOURCE_BRANCH_NAME, SOURCE_REPO_NAME will be replaced with the repositories name, in your case .settings and SOURCE_BRANCH_NAME with the name of the branch to action was triggered from, in your case the default branch (main).

After replacing the values the new branch would be repo-sync/.settings/default which throws an error because a branch can't have a dot in it.

To prevent this, use the BRANCH_PREFIX option to change the text before SOURCE_BRANCH_NAME, so everything before /default in your case. Setting it to sync for example would change the new branch to sync/default.

All of that is not needed though if you want to push the changes directly to the target branch instead of creating a PR. When you enable this with the SKIP_PR option it won't create a new branch in the first place.

[N6REJ]

ok, imported to "config" repo and it now works completely EXCEPT it made a branch called https://github.com/Bearsampp/module-adminer/tree/config/default. Really sorry @BetaHuhn to be a pest

[N6REJ]

What I want to happen is:

• I make a change to the global settings repo.
• It sends the change to all 40(ish) repos since they use the same files.
• Once it arrives at the repos its' automatically merged.

This way all the repos are kept using the same files.

[BetaHuhn]

Here's how you can achieve that:

.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 }}
          SKIP_PR: true

The SKIP_PR option as mentioned in the README skips the creation of a PR and directly pushes to the default branch (in your case main) of each specified target repository.

sync.yml:

group:
  - files:
      - source: .git-sync/site/.github
        dest: .github
      - source: LICENSE
        dest: LICENSE
      - source: .gitignore
        dest: .gitignore
      - source: .editor.config
        dest: .editor.config
      - source: img
        dest: img
    repos: |
      Bearsampp/website
      Bearsampp/Bearsampp.github.io
  - files: 
      - source: .git-sync/modules/.github
        dest: .github
      - source: LICENSE
        dest: LICENSE
      - source: .gitignore
        dest: .gitignore
      - source: .editor.config
        dest: .editor.config
      - source: img
        dest: img
    repos: |
      Bearsampp/module_apache
      Bearsampp/module_adminer

[N6REJ]

It's almost perfect now...
I can't figure out where to put deleteOrphaned: true so that it removes any images ( or anything else ) that I delete.
for example, in https://github.com/Bearsampp/module-adminer/tree/master/img https://github.com/Bearsampp/module-adminer/blob/master/img/favicon-16x16.png should no longer exist.

[BetaHuhn]

Take a look at this section in the README.

You need to enable the option for each folder/directory you define with the source and dest keywords.

[N6REJ]

thats what I thought.. I'll try it again.

[N6REJ]

I have it right, and there are no errors, but its not purging the removed file.

group:
  - files:
      - source: .git-sync/site/.github
        dest: .github
      - source: LICENSE
        dest: LICENSE
      - source: .gitignore
        dest: .gitignore
      - source: .editorconfig
        dest: .editorconfig
      - source: img
        dest: img
        deleteOrphaned: true
    repos: |
      Bearsampp/website
      Bearsampp/Bearsampp.github.io

  - files:
      - source: .git-sync/modules/.github
        dest: .github
      - source: LICENSE
        dest: LICENSE
      - source: .gitignore
        dest: .gitignore
      - source: .editorconfig
        dest: .editorconfig
      - source: img
        dest: img
        deleteOrphaned: true
    repos: |
      Bearsampp/module-apache
      Bearsampp/module-adminer

https://github.com/Bearsampp/module-adminer/blob/master/img/favicon-16x16.png should no longer exist.

[BetaHuhn]

Hmm weird, your config looks right.

Could you try to enable actions step debug mode by setting the repository secret ACTIONS_STEP_DEBUG to true and sharing the action run logs after rerunning your workflow?

[N6REJ]

sure.. and ty...
I hope this is the right one, never tried this before...
logs_140.zip

[N6REJ]

nope

[BetaHuhn]

Whoops, my fix had a bug in it :/

Should work now, sorry!

[N6REJ]

lol

[N6REJ]

much better :D

[BetaHuhn]

Looks great 😄

[N6REJ]

I know its not your issue but could you explain why phpstorm says I've got major syntax errors?

it doesn't do it in the actual action. Only in the sync file.

[BetaHuhn]

VS Code

[N6REJ]

got it, do I need any specific extensions?

[N6REJ]

oh, and I have visual studio also.

[BetaHuhn]

No, it has YAML support out of the box. For general usage there are a lot of guides for useful extensions depending on your use cases.

Haven't used Visual Studio, VS Code is completely separate.

[N6REJ]

ok, tyvm for all your help. I added a yaml formatter which now shows me if I have something stupid and why.
Completely rewrote the action https://github.com/Bearsampp/.settings/blob/main/.github/workflows/list-repos.yml
and now it outputs a very nice file.
https://github.com/Bearsampp/.settings/blob/main/current-repos.md
The last step would be to be able to take that output and put it in place of https://github.com/Bearsampp/.settings/blob/35ecbd7db20524412c51226284017554cb9cb611/.github/sync.yml#L30-L32

Doing this would allow the entire process to be fully automated. If I add/remove a repo it will automatically update everything.