git-down lets you download one or multiple directories from a Git repository without the hassle of cloning or downloading the whole repository, with one simple command.

It's really easy to use.

$ git-down -d <DESTINATION_DIRECTORY> <REPO_URL.git:branch> FILES

The -d <DESTINATION_DIRECTORY> option above is optional. If not specified the files will be downloaded into a directory under the name of the target repository.

We're using the bootstrap repo as an example for how to use the command but it works with any repository.

For example, running the following command will create a bootstrap-dist directory in the current working directory containing bootstrap's dist directory.

$ git-down -d bootstrap-dist https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap.git:master dist

If bootstrap-dist above is not specified, a directory named bootstrap will be created instead.

You can use git-down to download multiple directories from the same repository.

For example if you wanted to download both the dist and src directories from the Bootstrap repo you would use the following command.

$ git-down https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap.git:master dist src 

Shortcuts are intended to reduce keystrokes by allowing you to download from popular Git hosting services without typing out the full URL of the repository.

When using shortcuts the parts of the source are separated using colons (:).

The following are working examples you can use for downloading a directory from supported services:

GitHub

The following example command will download the dist directory from bootstrap repo into boostrap-latest from the GitHub repository.

$ git-down -d bootstrap-latest gh:tbws/bootstrap:master dist

Get only the css directory

$ git-down -d bootstrap-css gh:tbws/bootstrap:master dist/css

Get the css and img directories

$ git-down -d boostrap-css-img gh:tbws/bootstrap:master dist/css dist/img

BitBucket

$ git-down -d sqlalchemy-examples bb:zzzeek/sqlalchemy:master examples 

GitLab

$ git-down -d gitlab-scripts gl:gitlab-org/gitlab-ce:master scripts 

SourceForge

$ git-down -d nagioscore-sample-config sf:nagios/nagios-core:master sample-config 

It will save you time. Currently all of the ways to get just one directory from a repository require either too much clicking or typing!

If you want to download just one (or multiple) directory from a Git repository - like a dist directory of a project like bootstrap - you have several ways of doing so, including:

Download the archive and extract

The easiest and most straight-forward approach is to download the archive of the repo, extract the files and get the files/directory you want. This works best if you can get the archive via a web interface via a Download button/link - which can be annoying to find in some products (BitBucket!).

Shallow clone and mv

Another way is to do a shallow clone and get the directories you want using a move command. It's just too many commands and typing!

For example, getting the dist directory from bootstrap you would do something like:

$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/twbs/boostrap.git
$ cd bootstrap
$ mv ./dist ~/stuff/boostrap-latest 

C'mon, you don't have the time to be doing all that.

No pre-packaged binaries - you have to build it yourself, sorry. :/

You will have to install Rust. I highly recommend using rustup

$ git clone https://github.com/zikani03/git-down.git
$ cd git-down
$ cargo build --release
$ mv target/release/git-down ~/bin/git-down

Assuming your ~/bin is on your PATH you can now use it from the shell as git-down

This would be nice, me thinks :)

$ git-down -f v3.3.2 gh:twbs/bootstrap:dist bootstrap-3.3.2

Now, git down to business!

MIT

Copyright (c) 2017, Zikani Nyirenda Mwase