GitHub from the command line

Some tips and tricks for interacting with GitHub from the command line.

Overview

Navigating around the GitHub website between various repos/issues etc. is most definitely a time waster. I’ve decided to dig into the GitHub CLI. You can install it using homebrew with brew install gh and authorize it by running gh auth login in the command line (more info in this manual). Here’s a few things I found useful.

Dealing with issues

List issues

Once you are drilled down into the project directory in the command line (or simply go to Terminal in an RStudio project), type the following:

gh issue list

# Showing 3 of 3 open issues in sebdalgarno/blog
# 
# #6  add shortcodes                     about 1 day ago
# #5  get RSS button working             about 1 day ago
# #2  not rendering Rmd                  about 2 days ago

View issues

As I’m writing this I realize that I’ve already solved #2. I’ll view it just to make sure.

gh issue view 2

# not rendering Rmd
# Open • sebdalgarno opened about 2 days ago • 0 comments
# 
# 
#   blogdown problem as other themes also not working                           
# 
# 
# View this issue on GitHub: https://github.com/sebdalgarno/blog/issues/2

Close issues

Yes! this was solved by moving to hugodown. I’ll close it.

gh issue close 2
# ✔ Closed issue #2 (not rendering Rmd)

As an aside, I use this neat little trick to close issues automatically by adding fixes #33 to a commit message (where 33 is the issue #). gh issue list is going to be super helpful to find the issue #.

Create issues

I’ll create an issue to finish this post. I am being a little hard on myself here (since I’m already working on it!), but I really should finish this post.

gh issue create --title "Finish GitHub CLI post" --body "Seriously, do it."

# Creating issue in sebdalgarno/blog
# 
# https://github.com/sebdalgarno/blog/issues/9

and confirm:

gh issue list

# Showing 3 of 3 open issues in sebdalgarno/blog
#
# #9  Finish GitHub CLI post             about 1 minute ago
# #6  add shortcodes                     about 1 day ago
# #5  get RSS button working             about 1 day ago

Dealing with pull requests

Create changes on a branch

I’m going to create a branch called ‘fix_that_bug’ and fix that bug (you know, that one). Then I’ll commit and push those changes.

git cb fix_that_bug
# Switched to a new branch "fix_that_bug"

git coa 'fixed it'
[fix_that_bug 35457d9] fixed it
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
 
git p

{{% admonition tip tip %}} If the above git commands look strange that’s because they’re aliases! Check out my post on git alias for details. {{% /admonition %}}

Create pull request and merge

Now I’ll create a pull request with gh,

gh pr create --title "fixed it" --body "good lord that took me 35 hours" 

# ? Where should we push the 'fix_that_bug' branch? sebdalgarno/blog
#
# Creating pull request for fix_that_bug into master in sebdalgarno/blog
#
# remote: 
# remote: 
# To github.com:sebdalgarno/blog.git
#  * [new branch]      HEAD -> fix_that_bug
# Branch 'fix_that_bug' set up to track remote branch 'fix_that_bug' from 'origin'.
# https://github.com/sebdalgarno/blog/pull/12

check the diff (Ctrl-c to quit process)

gh pr diff 12

merge it,

gh pr merge 12
# ? What merge method would you like to use? Create a merge commit
# ? Delete the branch locally and on GitHub? Yes
# ? Submit? Yes
# ✔ Merged pull request #12 (fixed it)
# ✔ Deleted branch fix_that_bug and switched to branch master

and pull into local master (or main) branch.

git pull

That’s it for now!

Oh ya one more thing

gh issue close 9
# ✔ Closed issue #9 (Finish GitHub CLI post)

{{% admonition tip tip %}} See the full list of commands and examples and some resources for setting up scripts and aliases. {{% /admonition %}}