GitHub: Create your own repository landscape ⭐️

Overview 👋

Do you want to create a central repository to showcase all your highlighted repositories with descriptions and stars? Something like this:

I’ve created the repository landscape template tungbq/repos that can help you build your own repository landscape.
This blog post will describe the features and guide you on how to use this repository template to create your own repository landscape.

Key Features 🚀

The tungbq/repos repository template provides some features that help you create your repo landscape content automatically:

• Supports defining the list of repositories to be shown in the landscape, file repository_list.txt.
• Automated script to generate content from the repository_list.txt.
• A GitHub Action CI pipeline to generate new repository landscape content:
  • Triggers the automated generation script.
  • Creates a pull request to propose the new content.
• The repository landscape format provides:
  • Indexing with repo name title
  • Repo URL
  • Repo description (archived via GitHub API call)
  • A GitHub stars badge (leverage this tool https://shields.io/)

Quick start 📖

This is optional; you can skip this section and jump into Configure and use the template 📘 to create your own repo.
If you want to generate the content locally, update the repository_list.txt and run this script:

git clone https://github.com/tungbq/repos.git
cd repos
./generate_content.sh repository_list.txt

Result will be similar to:

➜ repos git:(main) ✗ ./generate_content.sh repository_list.txt
Working on repo: tungbq/devops-basics, with index: 1
Working on repo: tungbq/AWSHub, with index: 2
Working on repo: tungbq/devops-toolkit, with index: 3
Working on repo: tungbq/devops-project, with index: 4
Working on repo: tungbq/aws-lab-with-terraform, with index: 5
Working on repo: tungbq/awesome-workflow, with index: 6
Working on repo: tungbq/k8sHub, with index: 7
Working on repo: tungbq/Azure-DevOps-Pipeline, with index: 8
Working on repo: tungbq/find-github-issue, with index: 9
Working on repo: tungbq/challenges, with index: 10
Working on repo: tungbq/devops-dockerfiles, with index: 11
Working on repo: tungbq/terraform-sample-project, with index: 12
Working on repo: tungbq/repos, with index: 13

Now check the README.md and you would find your repository landscape content

Configure and use the template 📘

Below are the steps to help you create and configure your own landscape repository.
In short we only need to do 4 major steps: Create new repo from template > Set up PAT > Update repository list > Merge the automated PR.
Let’s dive into the detailed as below:

1. Create a new repo from the template

• Input your repository name to create and add a description if needed, then select Create repository.

• Wait for a few seconds, and your repository will be created.

2. Configure Personal Access Token (PAT) for the new repo

There is a CI workflow to automatically generate content and open a new Pull Request for your repository landscape, so setting up a PAT is required.

2.1. Generate the token

• Set the expiration date (my personal choice is 90 days; you can set it to whatever you want).
• Select only the repo scope for better security.

• Then click Generate token.
• Finally, copy or note the newly created token somewhere for later use.

2.2. Create the PAT token variable

• Once completed, you will see a result similar to this:

Now we are ready to trigger the CI workflow to update the repo landscape.

3. Update your repository list

• Add your repository list to the file repository_list.txt in your repository and merge it into the main branch, for example:

tungbq/devops-basics
tungbq/AWSHub
tungbq/devops-toolkit
tungbq/devops-project
tungbq/aws-lab-with-terraform
tungbq/awesome-workflow

4. Trigger the CI pipeline

Automatically trigger on merge event to main

• Once the repository_list.txt is merged into the main branch, the CI pipeline Update content will be triggered automatically.

• The CI pipeline will read the repository list and generate your new README.md content.
• Then, it will check and create a Pull Request to propose the new repository landscape content.

Manual trigger (Optional)

• You can also trigger that CI at any moment you want.
• Go to Actions and select Update content.
• Select “Run workflow” to trigger the CI:

5. Review and merge the PR

Once the PR is raised automatically, you just need to review and merge, and that’s it! You will have your own landscape content in README.md.

Congratulations 🎉, you’ve successfully created your own repo landscape! Now check the README.md for the final result.

Advance CI configuration (Optional)

• In the previous section, we triggered the CI pipeline to run on a merge event to main branch or manual event. You could improve that by changing the trigger event to run on a timer basis. For example, once a week or once a month. This would help us regularly check and update the landscape, keeping it up to date.
• To do so, add your desired cron trigger to repos/.github/workflows/generate_content.yaml

on: schedule: - cron: '0 0 * * 6' # Run every Saturday at midnight workflow_dispatch: # other events as needed

If you find this repository template helpful, feel free to use it, kindly consider showing your appreciation by giving it a star ⭐️. Any star you can give me will help me grow it even more ❤️

Thank you and happy coding! 🔥