Monki is essentially cp for github. Use monki to re-use code among your repos, or to copy someone else's repo into a subfolder of your existing repo.

It doesn't import any of the project's history. Think of it like copying the project files straight into the subfolder. The advantage of monki is that the subfolder can be updated very easily, whereas other alternatives (like git submodules / subtrees / etc) usually require some sort of management.

git clone https://github.com/laarc/monki then symlink monki/bin/monki into your PATH. E.g.

git clone https://github.com/laarc/monki
cd monki/bin
ln -s "$(pwd)/monki" ~/bin/

Anywhere within your project's git repo, run

$ monki clone user/project dstdir
$ git add dstdir
$ git commit

to copy the project files from https://github.com/user/project into ./dstdir.

Later on, the project may add some new features or fix some bugs. To pull in those changes, run

$ monki dstdir/
$ git add dstdir
$ git commit -m 'monki dstdir/`

Don't make direct changes to any of the files under dstdir. They'll be overwritten whenever you pull in changes via monki dstdir/.

To change the files, open dstdir/monki.l (which monki creates during the initial clone) and describe the changes you wish to make. Here's an example.

The "sudoarc" subfolder of this repo is an example of Monki's usage. It was created by running monki clone laarc/lumen-sudoarc sudoarc from the project directory, which clones laarc/lumen-sudoarc. It enables me to reuse that project's code in this repo without any hassle at all. Whenever I update the project, I run monki sudoarc/ to pull in the changes.

If you visit laarc/lumen-sudoarc, you'll notice the "lumen" subfolder is also manged by Monki. It's very easy to re-use code across all of your repos, since it's just a matter of running monki clone yourname/yourproject dir.

The lumen subfolder was originally created by running:

$ git clone https://github.com/laarc/lumen-sudoarc sudoarc
$ cd sudoarc
$ monki clone sctb/lumen lumen
$ git add lumen
$ git commit
$ git push

This created lumen/monki.l along with all of Lumen's files. A monki.l file tells Monki what to do to the subfolder it resides in.

If you just want a copy of someone's repo, then you won't need to edit any monki.l files. The monki clone foo/bar dst command automatically generates a dst/monki.l file for you.

If you want to make any changes to someone else's repo, examine sudoarc's lumen/monki.l file to see an example. It instructs monki to clone Lumen, modify it with various hacks (like multiline raw string syntax), fully rebuild Lumen three times, then run the test suite using make test.

(That's basically why the project was created: I needed a way to monkeypatch Lumen, and I didn't want to fork it and deal with keeping it in sync.)