git workflow - using one repo as the basis for another

Question

I've forked the Paul Irish's HTML5 boilerplate on github so I can have my own version which better suits my needs. If I start every new web project with this boilerplate, what's the best way to get that code into a new repo? As far as I can see I've got two options: Clone the repo. I don't just want to clone it, because I'm not really making changes to the boilerplate - I'm just using it as a launching-off point for a new website. Also, if I clone from github then the boilerplate repo will be setup as my remote for the new site. Copy-paste the code into a new directory and start a fresh git repo there. This feels wrong somehow. Is there a better way to handle this?

Accepted Answer

First, clone the skeleton repository:

```
git clone ssh://git@github.com/user/proj.git new_proj
```

Then, cd to the repo, and get rid of the origin remote:

```
cd new_repo
git remote rm origin
```

And finally, create a new remote for the project (you may want to create a new project in github first):

```
git remote add origin ssh://git@github.com/user/new_proj.git
```

Now, when you do `git push origin master`, it should update the new project. You will still have the history of the original project. In fact, you can rename the initial origin to `projbase` or some such, you can even pick up changes to your skeleton (though that could make things a bit messy in terms of merges, and rebases are frowned upon once you push to github).

git workflow - using one repo as the basis for another

Solution

Problem