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Giulia Chiola
Giulia Chiola

Posted on • Originally published at giuliachiola.dev

How to speed up development with GitHub CLI

#git #shell #github

Wait, what?!

I was today years old when I found out that GitHub has a command line interface 🤯.


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In the official docs the instructions to install and use it are quite clear to follow.

Installation

I use brew to install GitHub CLI, so

brew install gh
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did the magic in less then a minute.

Authorization

You have to authorize this application in order to use your GitHub account from the CLI:

gh auth login
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Answer few questions about CLI configuration, here's mines:

? What account do you want to log into? GitHub.com ? What is your preferred protocol for Git operations? SSH ? Upload your SSH public key to your GitHub account? /Users/giulia/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub ? Title for your SSH key: GitHub CLI ? How would you like to authenticate GitHub CLI? Login with a web browser ! First copy your one-time code: XXXX-XXXX Press Enter to open github.com in your browser...
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In your browser will appear this screen to confirm the authorization

authorize-github-cli

and you have to add your one-time code: XXXX-XXXX the prompt just gived to you

device-activation

Just few confirmation from the shell and we are almost done:

Press Enter to open github.com in your browser... ✓ Authentication complete. - gh config set -h github.com git_protocol ssh ✓ Configured git protocol
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congratulations

Ok, awesome! ✨

Let's run some commands!

To see all CLI configurations and options, just type

gh
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that returns a list of useful commands divided into subgroups

CORE COMMANDS auth: Authenticate gh and git with GitHub browse: Open the repository in the browser codespace: Connect to and manage codespaces gist: Manage gists issue: Manage issues pr: Manage pull requests release: Manage releases repo: Manage repositories
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As you can see above, you can manage lot of things from command line 😈 Below I listed my favourite ones.

Create a new repo

To create a new GitHub repository, run

gh repo create test-repository --private ✓ Created repository giuliachiola/test-repository on GitHub
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test-repository-github

Note: you have to specify if you want the repo private or public.

GitHub repo list 

gh repo list
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This is useful when you need to check on the fly a repo slug, url, or if it is private or not

Showing 30 of 47 repositories in @giuliachiola giuliachiola/super-blog-11ty Blog built using 11ty static site generator, based on super-styleguide public 2d giuliachiola/super-blog-content Blog markdown content where documentation rules 📚 public 2d giuliachiola/giuliachiola public 9d giuliachiola/eleventy-styleguide Custom pattern library tool using 11ty static site generator. public 9d giuliachiola/super-notes Personal tech notes, not always well organized 😇 public 9d giuliachiola/super-styleguide Personal blog styleguide built using UIengine as presentation layer public Mar 5, 2022 giuliachiola/react-ts-ecommerce 📒 Step by step from tutorial "React shopping cart with TypeScript | React Ecomme... public Mar 5, 2022 giuliachiola/dotfiles 🛠.files - for fast MacBook setup public Mar 5, 2022 giuliachiola/react-movies 📒 Step by step from tutorial "React JS Course for Beginners 2021 Tutorial - free... public Oct 7, 2021 giuliachiola/react-ts-quiz-app 📒 Step by step from tutorial "React / Typescript Tutorial - Build a Quiz App - W... public Oct 1, 2021 giuliachiola/react-typescript-herrington 📒 Step by step from tutorial "Typescript for React Components From Beginners to ... public Oct 1, 2021 ...
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Change repo visibility

Change repo visibility is quite annoying from the browser, as you have to sift through lots of tabs and panels on the UI. Change visibility from the CLI instead, is nearly instantaneous:

gh repo edit <repo-name> --visibility <visibility-string>
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For instance:

gh repo edit giuliachiola/super-blog-11ty --visibility private ✓ Edited repository giuliachiola/super-blog-11ty
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Sync repo

To pull everything in one go, you can also sync all your repo branches and config:

gh repo sync ✓ Synced the "main" branch from giuliachiola/super-blog-11ty to local repository
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Create new gist

Gist are a sort of "snippet" you can store on your GitHub account. They are quite useful to save one-shot configurations, and you can also save others gists in your favourites!

gh create gist
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📚 More info

GitHub CLI Manual

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