How to automatically download files from github without copying the repository

Question

I have a number of scripts that I use almost everyday in my work. I develop and maintain these on my personal laptop. I have a local git repository where I track the changes, and I have a repository on github to which I push my changes.

I do a lot of my work on a remote supercomputer, and I use my scripts there a lot. I would like to keep my remote /home/bin updated with my maintained scripts, but without cluttering the system with my repository.

My current solution does not feel ideal. I have added the following code belowto my .bashrc . Whenever I log in, my repository will be deleted, and I then clone my project from github. Then I copy the script files I want to my bin, and make them executable.

This sort of works, but it does not feel like an elegant solution. I would like to simply download the script files directly, without bothering with the git repository. I never edit my script files from the remote computer anyway, so I just want to get the files from github.

I was thinking that perhaps wget could work, but it did not feel very robust to include the urls to the raw file page at github; if I rename the file I suppose I have to update the code as well. At least my current solution is robust (as long as the github link does not change).

Code in my .bashrc:

REPDIR=mydir
if [ -d $REPDIR ]; then
    rm -rf $REPDIR
    echo "Old repository removed."
fi
cd $HOME
git clone https://github.com/user/myproject
cp $REPDIR/*.py $REPDIR/*.sh /home/user/bin/
chmod +x /home/user/bin/*

Based on Kent's solution, I have defined a function that updates my scripts. To avoid any issues with symlinks, I just unlink everything and relink. that might just be my paranoia, though....

function updatescripts() {
DIR=/home/user/scripts
CURR_DIR=$PWD
cd $DIR
git pull origin master
cd $CURR_DIR
for file in $DIR/*.py $DIR/*.sh; do
    if [ -L $HOME/bin/$(basename $file) ]; then
        unlink $HOME/bin/$(basename $file)
    fi
    ln -s $file $HOME/bin/$(basename $file)
done
}

Answer 1

on that remote machine, don't do rm then clone , keep the repository somewhere, just do pull . Since you said you will not change the files on that machine, there won't be conflicts.

For the scripts files. Don't do cp , instead, create symbolic links ( ln -s ) to your target directory.