This repository is a very basic template for a new repository hosted on GitHub. It contains the following boilerplate:

• CHANGELOG.md
• LICENSE
• README.md
• GitHub CODEOWNERS
• Code of Conduct
• Contributing Guide
• Security Guide
• Empty dirs for GitHub Issue and PR templates
• Empty dir for GitHub Actions workflows
• Large .gitignore file

I highly recommened the GitHub CLI for interacting with the various GitHub APIs.

To create a new repository from this template, you can do the following:

$ gh repo create YOUR_GITHUB_USER/YOUR_GITHUB_REPO --description "A description of your repository" --template timoguin/repo-template --confirm

Since this is a very basic template, you will need to populate or modify some aspects of the repo contents after initial creation.

Here are the steps:

• Update this README.
• Update CODEOWNERS. This is used by GitHub for code reviews.
• Update the LICENSE. By default, this template includes the MIT license text.
• Update the CHANGELOG to include links for your specific repository.
• Update the Contributing Guide. By default, this template includes text describing an opinionated fork-based workflow.
• Update the Code of Conduct and insert your preferred contact method in the Enforcement section. By default, this template includes the text from v2.0 of the Contributor Covenant.
• Update the Security Guide to detail the process for reporting security issues.
• If you want to use Issue Templates, add them to the ISSUE_TEMPLATE directory.
• If you want to use Pull Request Templates, add them to the PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE directory.
• If you want to use GitHub Actions, add workflow definitions to the workflows directory.
• Edit the gitignore file to your preferences. The included on is quite large and includes a swath of patterns for various languages, tooling, and operating systems.

And here is a sed-based method example to help with some of the more basic search-and-replace tasks:

$ export NAME="Your Name"
$ export EMAIL="[email protected]"
$ export GITHUB_USER="YOUR_GITHUB_USER"
$ export GITHUB_REPO="YOUR_REPO"

# For OS X, use gsed. Otherwise you will get the error "invalid command code C".  See
# the below this code snippet.
alias sed=gsed

$ echo -e "# $GITHUB_REPO\n\nThis is my README, and I hope you will READ it." > README.md
$ sed -i "s/@timoguin/@$GITHUB_USER/; s/Tim O'Guin/$NAME/; s/[email protected]/$EMAIL/; s/timoguin\/repo-template/$GITHUB_USER\/$GITHUB_REPO/; s/2021 /$(date  '%Y') /" CHANGELOG.md LICENSE .github/CODEOWNERS .github/*.md

NOTE: if you are using OS X, you will need GNU Sed to support the -i flag for in-place file modifications.