FOSSPicks

GitHub client

GitHub CLI

Many of us use GitHub for our day-to-day work. It is closed source, and it's now owned by Microsoft, but its CEO is also Nat Friedman of Gnome, Ximian SUSE Studio fame, and it's still used by thousands of open source projects. The way most of us interact with GitHub is via its excellent web interface. The web UI is where you typically create a pull request, review and merge other pull requests, and manage issues. But we also still use the git command to interact with the typical git processes of cloning projects, checking out branches, and updating the code. This can create an interruption in you workflow as you need to shift from the command line to a web browser, also adding to the temptation of opening Reddit or YouTube. Which is perhaps why GitHub has launched its own official, and open source, command-line client.

After installation, gh is the default command to launch the client. When you first use it, a browser session will be spawned to authenticate your account with GitHub and consequently allow the command access to your public and private repositories, as well as general access to other GitHub repositories. Hopefully, this will be the last time you'll need to use the browser, because from the command you can create a pull request (gh pr create), check out pull requests (gh pr checkout <number>), list issues (gh issue list) and view the details for a specific issue (gh issue view <number>). You can also check the status of both issues and pull requests. These commands are a huge help if you're already working on the command line, and the checkout functionality in particular lets you skip a whole chunk of copy and pasting from the web interface.

Project Website

https://github.com/cli/cli

The GitHub CLI makes you more productive by removing a web browser – and all its time-wasting temptations – from your workflow.

Application firewall

Buy this article as PDF

Express-Checkout as PDF
Price $2.95
(incl. VAT)

Buy Linux Magazine

SINGLE ISSUES
 
SUBSCRIPTIONS
 
TABLET & SMARTPHONE APPS
Get it on Google Play

US / Canada

Get it on Google Play

UK / Australia

Related content

  • Big Shot: OpenShot Video Editor Version 1.0 Released

    Video clip editors have been in short supply under Linux. Jonathan Thomas is now trying to fill that gap with the first stable version of the OpenShot Video Editor.

  • FOSSPicks

    This month Graham looks at Bespoke, Waydroid, OpenShot, pedalboard, Onivim 2, Mr. Rescue, and more!

  • Get Started with Fedora

    Fedora might look foreign at first, but after a few minutes of finding your way around, you can feel right at home. To help jump start your journey into Fedora, let's take the grand tour.

  • FOSSPicks

    This month Graham looks at Firefly Synth, Faircamp, Gnome Web, GPlates, Flowblade, CorsixTH, and more!

  • Dallas Ubuntu Developer Summit: 10.04 to Drop Gimp

    The Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS-L) in Dallas TX is setting the switches for the upcoming Ubuntu LTS version, Lucid Lynx. One loser is Gimp: the image manipulator should disappear from the CD.

comments powered by Disqus
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters

Support Our Work

Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

Learn More

News