Question

I am writing a script to automate setting up new projects for me.

this includes pulling down a github repository.

What I want to do is have some output from my script, then call git clone $repo

I want to show the output from that command while it is running, but then when it has run if it has run successfully replace it’s output (note just the git commands output, I still want the output from before that to be there) with repository successfully cloned and if failed just leave the output there, and print repository cloning failed.

How can I do this?

Below is my current (rather simple) script.

#! /bin/bash

# -p project name

templateurl="[e-mail]:xxx/xxx-site-template.git"

while getopts ":p:" opt; do #eventually I'll add more options here

case $opt in
  p)
    project=$OPTARG
    ;;
  \?)
    echo "Invalid option: -$OPTARG" >&2
    exit 1
    ;;
  :)
    echo "Option -$OPTARG requires an argument." >&2
    exit 1
    ;;
esac
done

if [ -z "$project" ]; then
    echo "Project name required"
    exit 1
fi

clear
echo "|==========================|"
echo "| New xxx Project Creator  |"
echo "|==========================|"
echo "Project: $project"

if [ -d "$project" ]; then
    echo "Directory $project already exists!"
    exit 1
fi


mkdir $project
if [ ! -d "$project" ]; then
    echo "Failed to create project directory!"
    exit 1
fi

echo "Cloning xxx Template repository"
git clone $templateurl $project

Answer 1

git clone does provide a exit code you can read with $? like follows:

git clone user@server:repo
echo $?

This will print 0 if everything worked just fine. If for example the folder is not a git repository you will get the exit code 128.

you can check if the clone worked as follows:

git clone user@server:repo localrepo --quiet
success=$?
if [[ $success -eq 0 ]];
then
    echo "Repository successfully cloned."
else
    echo "Something went wrong!"
fi

--quietwill suppress any output from git, as long as there are no errors. So if you just remove the else-branch you will get you positive output or the error produced by git.