Usage

Standard usage is to pass a --git flag to cargo generate or short cargo gen. This will prompt you to enter the name of your project.

⚠️ NOTE: cargo gen requires a cargo alias configuration

cargo generate username-on-github/mytemplate
# is the same as 
cargo generate gh:username-on-github/mytemplate
# is the same as 
cargo generate --git https://github.com/username-on-github/mytemplate.git

If you have your templates not GitHub then you can leverage the lazy abbreviation prefixes:

# for gitlab.com
cargo generate gl:username-on-gitlab/mytemplate # translates to https://gitlab.com/username-on-gitlab/mytemplate.git
# or for bitbucket.org
cargo generate bb:username-on-bitbucket/mytemplate # translates to https://bitbucket.org/username-on-bitbucket/mytemplate.git
# or for github.com 
cargo generate gh:username-on-github/mytemplate # translates to https://github.com/username-on-github/mytemplate.git
# or for git.sr.ht
cargo generate sr:username-on-sourcehut/mytemplate # translates to https://git.sr.ht/~username-on-sourcehut/mytemplate (note the tilde)

Both will expand to the https urls of the repo with the suffix .git in the URL.

You can also pass the name of your project to the tool using the --name or -n flag:

cargo generate --git https://github.com/username-on-github/mytemplate.git --name myproject

Templates in subfolders

If the repository or path specified for the template contains multiple templates (Any sub-folder that contains a cargo-generate.toml file), cargo-generate will ask for the specific folder to be used as the template.

Multiple sub-templates can also be configured in the cargo-generate.toml file like this:

[template]
sub_templates = ["folder1", "folder2"]

Doing so also sets the order when cargo-generate asks what to expand, while the first option will be the default.

The specific subfolder in the git repository may be specified on the command line like this:

cargo generate --git https://github.com/username-on-github/mytemplate.git <relative-template-path>

⚠️ NOTE: When using the subfolder feature, cargo-generate will search for the cargo-generate.toml file in the subfolder first, traversing back towards the template root in case it is not found.

Generating into current dir

If the user wants to generate a template straight into the current folder, without creating a subfolder for the contents and without attempting to initialize a .git repo or similar, the --init flag can be used.

cargo generate --init --git https://github.com/username-on-github/mytemplate.git

⚠️ NOTE: cargo-generate will not allow any existing files to be overwritten and will fail to generate any files should there be any conflicts.

Generating using a local template

You can generate a project using a local template via the --path flag:

git clone https://github.com/username-on-github/mytemplate.git $HOME/mytemplate # Clone any template
cargo generate --path $HOME/mytemplate # Use it locally

⚠️ NOTE: cargo-generate will not allow to use the association --path and --git flags.

git over ssh

New in version 0.7.0 is the support for both public and private and ssh git remote urls. For example:

cargo generate --git git@github.com:rustwasm/wasm-pack-template.git --name mywasm

leads to the same result as:

cargo generate --git https://github.com/rustwasm/wasm-pack-template.git --name mywasm

as well as:

cargo generate rustwasm/wasm-pack-template --name mywasm

authentication using ssh-agent

New in version 0.15.1 is the ssh-agent usage for password protected keys. It's also the default mechanism on Windows.

On Windows

ssh-agent is the default and also the only possibility to get git+ssh working. Please follow this guide to get ssh-agent configured on windows.

On *Nix and macOS

If you omit the identity file (read the next paragraph) OR a provided identity file does not exist, then the default is to use ssh-agent.

ssh identity file (private key)

However, if you use a different file, you can pass a custom ssh identity with via -i | --identity like -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa_other as argument.

⚠️ NOTE: password protected private keys are NOT supported, you have to use ssh-agent and omit the -i argument (see above).

If you permanently want to use a custom identity file, you can configure it in the cargo-generate config file like this:

# an extract of ~/.cargo/cargo-generate.toml
[defaults]
# note that `~/` and `$HOME/` are going to be expanded to the full path seamlessly
ssh_identity = "~/.ssh/id_rsa_other"
# that is equivalent to 
ssh_identity = "$HOME/.ssh/id_rsa_other"
# that is equivalent to 
ssh_identity = "/home/john/.ssh/id_rsa_other"

⚠️ NOTE: that the cli argument -i always overrules the ssh_identity from the config file.

http(s) proxy

New in version 0.7.0 is automatic proxy usage. So, if http(s)_PROXY env variables are provided, they will be used for cloning a http(s) template repository.