Automating Git repository setup with Capistrano

1 minute reading time

Setting up a remote repository for Git is really easy, but who wants to type things unnecessarily? Tonight I knocked up a task for Capistrano which gitify’s your current directory then creates a remote git repository and pushes to it.

It’s based on a bit of code by Geoffrey Grosenbach but modified for my needs. I have a VPS which is where I want to host my repositories. This should also work if you’re running on a shared host like Dreamhost where you have ssh access, though I haven’t tested it.

Simply cut and paste the following code into ~/.caprc then you can run:

cap git:setup scm=t

If it’s a Rails app then you can also do

cap git:setup scm=t railsapp=t

which will add .gitignore files to exclude the basics like log and temp files, .DS_Store, .sqlite3 and the api docs


Got any questions or comments? Drop me a message on Twitter (@elaptics).