Simplify workflow "copier copy && git init && git add/commit"

[OverkillGuy]

I've been maintaining a personal project template for a few years (love you, copier!), and one of my pet issues is that the result of expanding the template is for me always intended to be a git repository.

But to set that up, I've had to make a task that runs (abbreviated here, see below for full) git init && git commit, rendering the template "unsafe" + breaking update workflows (unless I --skip-tasks during updates) for what feels like a very common workflow.

I wish I could specify that the template's output is meant to be a git repo, and ideally what the commit message can be (though remain editable), so that I can remove this unnecessary unsafe-ness.

So, first, a question for other users, how do you make your template generate a git repo, and how common is it that you don't make a git repo = not need that feature?

Am I missing something, that such a common workflow is not part of this tool that thinks so much and so well about templating?

Towards a feature suggestion

If this is of interest, I could imagine a new option group for initializing git repo as outcome of the last task, doing that init && add && commit via copier = trusted.

Remains a few questions if so, around things like:

• who is the user.name + user.email for the commit (normal git user? template builder? override locally?)
• is there any task that needs run after commit (un-commitable results like binary data, other secret etc) and how to specify

Appendix: my current workflow

For illustration purposes.

I found it interesting to make the task run not just git init and git commit but also git tag v0.1.0, to ensure that the resulting first commit is workflow-ready, a real "package" at a real (if useless) version of the repo.

See the task definition:

_tasks:
  - >-
    export AUTHOR_NAME="{{author_name}}";
    export AUTHOR_EMAIL="{{author_email}}";
    export TEMPLATE="{{project_slug}}";
    {{_copier_conf.src_path}}/hooks/git_init_project

and the project's hooks/git_init_project:

#!/usr/bin/env bash


# Prepopulates a git repo out of the rendered template with an initial commit+tag
create_git_repository() {
    # if [ $# -lt 2 ]; then
    #     echo "Usage: create_git_repository USER_NAME USER_EMAIL"
    #     echo $?
    #     exit 1
    # fi
    # AUTHOR_NAME=$1
    # AUTHOR_EMAIL=$2

    # If a git repo is already in place
    if [[ -d ".git/" ]];
    then
        echo "Repo already exists. Exiting..."
        exit 0  # No action, exit early
    fi

    echo "Creating a git repo..."

    # First create empty git repo
    git init --initial-branch main

    # Temporarily set commiter name.
    # Nicely solves problem of "missing git user" in CI by making all
    # template instantiation use a set user name/email combo
    git config --get user.name > /dev/null || git config --local user.name "${AUTHOR_NAME}"
    git config --get user.email > /dev/null || git config --local user.email "${AUTHOR_EMAIL}"

    # Commit
    git add --all
    git commit \
        --message "Initial commit from 'copier' template"
    git tag v0.1.0 \
        --annotate \
        --message "First releasable artefact, from template"

    # Reset the user config after committing if fallback values were used
    git config --unset user.name || true
    git config --unset user.email || true
}


create_git_repository