REPOCAT 🐯

A simple CLI tool that accepts either:

1. A GitHub repository URL
2. A local folder path

and concatenates all text/code files into a single string output. This can be useful for providing context to LLMs or other tools that need a single “flattened” representation of your codebase.

Features

• Configurable Include/Exclude: Specify which file types to include or exclude using glob patterns.
• Automatic Ignore: By default, repocat respects .gitignore and other ignore files (unless you disable it).
• GitHub Repo Cloning: Automatically clones a GitHub repository and concatenates matching files.
• Checkout Specific Branch/Commit/Tag (via --checkout).
• Preserve or Strip Blank Lines (via --keep-blank-lines).
• Optionally Disable Ignore Rules (via --no-ignore).

Installation

If you have Rust (and Cargo) installed:

cargo install repocat

Alternatively, clone this repository and run:

cargo build --release

Your compiled binary will be in the target/release directory.

You may also use the pre-compiled binaries offered in the Release, though support for different platforms may be limited.

Usage Examples

1. Local Folder Input

repocat --root /path/to/my-project

• This will walk the my-project folder, respecting .gitignore by default.
• Includes files matching *.toml, *.md, *.py, *.rs, *.cpp, *.h, *.hpp, *.c, *.rst, *.txt, *.cuh, *.cu.
• Writes all content into concatenated_output.txt.
• By default, root is .

2. GitHub Repository

repocat --root https://github.com/owner/repo

• Clones repo from GitHub into a temporary folder.
• By default, it checks out the default branch (e.g., main or master).
• Gathers all matching files and writes them to concatenated_output.txt.

3. Checking Out a Specific Branch or Commit

repocat --root https://github.com/owner/repo --checkout feature-branch

repocat --root https://github.com/owner/repo --checkout abcd1234

• Clones the specified repository, then checks out either a branch named feature-branch or the commit abcd1234.
• Proceeds to gather and concatenate files as usual.

4. Including and Excluding Specific File Types

repocat \
  --root /path/to/my-project \
  --include "*.rs,*.toml" \
  --exclude "*.lock,*.bak"

• Only gathers .rs and .toml files, while excluding anything ending with .lock or .bak.

5. Preserving Blank Lines

By default, repocat removes blank lines for more compact output. If you want to preserve them:

repocat --root /path/to/my-project --keep-blank-lines

• This keeps the blank lines in your final concatenated output.

6. Disabling Ignore Logic

If you want to include hidden and/or binary files, you can disable all ignore logic:

repocat --root /path/to/my-project --no-ignore

• This will cause repocat to walk the folder without ignoring anything.
• Warning: This may significantly increase the size of your output if your project has large binary files or directories like .git.

Additional Info

• repocat uses the ignore crate by default, which means it respects .gitignore, .ignore, and .rgignore files, along with hidden file filtering and binary file detection.
• The default list of “included” file extensions can be found in src/lib.rs, but can be overridden via the --include and --exclude flags.
• If you prefer to keep blank lines in your concatenated output, use --keep-blank-lines. Otherwise, empty lines are removed.

Roadmap / Future Enhancements

• JSON Output: A possible future feature to output file metadata and content in a structured JSON format.
• Partial Extraction: Extract only certain lines or only lines matching a pattern.
• Parallel Processing: Speed up concatenation by reading files in parallel.

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Thanks for checking out repocat! Feel free to open an issue or pull request if you have suggestions or encounter any problems.