Powershell Script: to Create Git Repo with .gitignore

 I'm a scripting junkie, so I got tired of having to download or copy/paste a gitignore file into my git repos all the time. To that end, I created the script below.

The involved function is

gitig

which downloads a boilerplate .gitignore file from github (i have it defaulting to downloading the VisualStudio .gitignore, but you can change that, or provide your own at call time).

The other function is

gitinit

which calls

gitig

followed by

git init

. That way you can initialize a new git repo with a boiler plate .gitignore script with a single powershell command.

To install these, 

1. Open Powershell
2. Type "notepad $profile"
1. This will open notepad with your powershell profile
3. Paste the code below at the bottom of that file
4. Save and close the profile file
5. Restart powershell

Now you can type

gitinit

from powershell to create a repository with a boilerplate .gitignore anywhere you want.

function gitig(
    [String]$Name = "VisualStudio", 
    [switch]$Overwrite = $false, 
    [switch]$Silent = $false) 
{
	$url = "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/github/gitignore/master/${name}.gitignore"
    $headerMessage = "** FAILURE **"
    $message = ""
    try {
        $response = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $url
        $message = "    Retrieved content from URL: $url`n"
        $targetFilePath = Join-Path (Get-Location) ".gitignore"
        $fileExists = Test-Path $targetFilePath
        if ((-not $fileExists) -or $Overwrite) {
            $headerMessage = "** SUCCESS **"
            
            if ($Overwrite) {
                $message = "$message    OVERWROTE ""$targetFilePath"""
            } else {
                $message = "$message    Wrote content to ""$targetFilePath"""
            }
            $response.Content > $targetFilePath
        } else {
            $headerMessage = "** FAILURE **"
            $message = "$message    File already exists! To Overwrite, pass '-Overwrite'"
        }
    }
    catch {
		$headerMessage = "** FAILURE **"
        $message = "    Requesting ""$url""`n    $($_.Exception.Message)"
	}
    finally {
        if (-not $Silent) {
            Write-Output $headerMessage
            Write-Output $message
        }
    }
}

function gitinit([string]$GitIgnoreName = "VisualStudio") {
	if (-Not (Test-Path .git)) {
		gitig -Name $GitIgnoreName
		git init
	} else {
		Write-Output "Git repository already exists here."
	}
}