gitea/docs/content/doc/features/gitea-directory.md

---

date: “2019-11-28:00:00+02:00” title: “The .gitea Directory” slug: “gitea-directory” weight: 40 toc: true draft: false menu: sidebar:

parent: "features"
name: "The .gitea Directory"
weight: 50
identifier: "gitea-directory"

---

The .gitea directory

Gitea repositories can include a .gitea directory at their base which will store settings/configurations for certain features.

Templates

Gitea includes template repositories, and one feature implemented with them is auto-expansion of specific variables within your template files.
To tell Gitea which files to expand, you must include a template file inside the .gitea directory of the template repository.
Gitea uses gobwas/glob for its glob syntax. It closely resembles a traditional .gitignore, however there may be slight differences.

Example .gitea/template file

All paths are relative to the base of the repository

# All .go files, anywhere in the repository
**.go

# All text files in the text directory
text/*.txt

# A specific file
a/b/c/d.json

# Batch files in both upper or lower case can be matched
**.[bB][aA][tT]

NOTE: The template file will be removed from the .gitea directory when a repository is generated from the template.

Variable Expansion

In any file matched by the above globs, certain variables will be expanded.
All variables must be of the form $VAR or ${VAR}. To escape an expansion, use a double $$, such as $$VAR or $${VAR}

Variable	Expands To
REPO_NAME	The name of the generated repository
TEMPLATE_NAME	The name of the template repository
REPO_DESCRIPTION	The description of the generated repository
TEMPLATE_DESCRIPTION	The description of the template repository
REPO_LINK	The URL to the generated repository
TEMPLATE_LINK	The URL to the template repository
REPO_HTTPS_URL	The HTTP(S) clone link for the generated repository
TEMPLATE_HTTPS_URL	The HTTP(S) clone link for the template repository
REPO_SSH_URL	The SSH clone link for the generated repository
TEMPLATE_SSH_URL	The SSH clone link for the template repository