The gist gem provides a gist command that you can use from your terminal to upload content to https://gist.github.com/.

‌If you have ruby installed:

gem install gist 

‌If you're using Bundler:

source :rubygems gem 'gist' 

‌For OS X, gist lives in Homebrew

brew install gist 

‌To upload the contents of a.rb just:

gist a.rb 

‌Upload multiple files:

gist a b c gist *.rb 

‌By default it reads from STDIN, and you can set a filename with -f.

gist -f test.rb <a.rb 

‌Alternatively, you can just paste from the clipboard:

gist -P 

‌Use -p to make the gist private:

gist -p a.rb 

‌Use -d to add a description:

gist -d "Random rbx bug" a.rb 

‌You can update existing gists with -u:

gist -u GIST_ID FILE_NAME gist -u 42f2c239d2eb57299408 test.txt 

‌If you'd like to copy the resulting URL to your clipboard, use -c.

gist -c <a.rb 

‌If you'd like to copy the resulting embeddable URL to your clipboard, use -e.

gist -e <a.rb 

‌And you can just ask gist to open a browser window directly with -o.

gist -o <a.rb 

‌To list (public gists or all gists for authed user) gists for user

gist -l : all gists for authed user gist -l defunkt : list defunkt's public gists 

To read a gist and print it to STDOUT

gist -r GIST_ID gist -r 374130 

‌See gist --help for more detail.

To associate and manage uploaded gists with your GitHub account, gist needs an authentication token, with at least the "gist" permission. The token can be obtained using gist --login. Alternately, you may generate a personal access token through https://github.com/settings/tokens and save it in ~/.netrc.

Gist can login to your GitHub account. It doesn't store your Github username or password, it just uses them to get an OAuth2 token (with the "gist" permission).

$ gist --login Obtaining OAuth2 access_token from github. GitHub username: ConradIrwin GitHub password: 2-factor auth code: Success! https://github.com/settings/tokens 

This token is stored in ~/.gist and used for all future gisting. The generated token will be listed in https://github.com/settings/tokens, and can also be revoked from there.

Gist can make use of a personal token stored in ~/.netrc. Github credentials stored in this file are matched by the hostname, and can be shared among different tools, like git, and curl.

The ~/.netrc file should be unreadable by anyone except the owner. To store your gist token in ~/.netrc, use the format:

machine github.com password PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN 

You may also maintain a separate token exclusively for gisting by associating the token with the hostname gist.github.com, and setting the environment variable GITHUB_URL=https://gist.github.com.

Independently of the authentication mechanism used, you can always upload gists anonymously by using the -a option.

gist -a a.rb 

If you'd like gist to use your locally installed GitHub Enterprise, you need to export the GITHUB_URL environment variable (usually done in your ~/.bashrc).

export GITHUB_URL=https://github.internal.example.com/ 

Once you've done this and restarted your terminal (or run source ~/.bashrc), gist will automatically use github enterprise instead of the public github.com

When using gist --login your token for GitHub Enterprise will be stored in .gist.<protocol>.<server.name>[.<port>] (e.g. ~.gist.https.github.internal.example.com for the GITHUB_URL example above) instead of ~/.gist. The token can also be stored in ~/.netrc with an appropriate entry for the host. For instance, for the example above,

machine github.internal.example.com password GITHUB_ENTERPRISE_TOKEN 

If you have multiple servers or use Enterprise and public GitHub often, you can work around this by creating scripts that set the env var and then run gist. Keep in mind that to use the public GitHub you must unset the env var. Just setting it to the public URL will not work. Use unset GITHUB_URL

If you cannot use passwords, as most Enterprise installations do, you can generate the token via the web interface and then simply save the string in the correct file. Avoid line breaks or you might see:

$ gist -l Error: Bad credentials 

‌You can also use Gist as a library from inside your ruby code:

Gist.gist("Look.at(:my => 'awesome').code") 

If you need more advanced features you can also pass:

• :access_token to authenticate using OAuth2 (default is `File.read("~/.gist")).
• :filename to change the syntax highlighting (default is a.rb).
• :public if you want your gist to have a guessable url.
• :description to add a description to your gist.
• :update to update an existing gist (can be a URL or an id).
• :anonymous to submit an anonymous gist (default is false).
• :copy to copy the resulting URL to the clipboard (default is false).
• :open to open the resulting URL in a browser (default is false).

NOTE: The access_token must have the "gist" scope.

‌If you want to upload multiple files in the same gist, you can:

Gist.multi_gist("a.rb" => "Foo.bar", "a.py" => "Foo.bar") 

‌If you'd rather use gist's builtin access_token, then you can force the user to obtain one by calling:

Gist.login! 

‌This will take them through the process of obtaining an OAuth2 token, and storing it in ~/.gist, where it can later be read by Gist.gist

‌If you'd like -o or -c to be the default when you use the gist executable, add an alias to your ~/.bashrc (or equivalent). For example:

alias gist='gist -c' 

‌If you'd prefer gist to open a different browser, then you can export the BROWSER environment variable:

export BROWSER=google-chrome 

If clipboard or browser integration don't work on your platform, please file a bug or (more ideally) a pull request.

If you need to use an HTTP proxy to access the internet, export the HTTP_PROXY or http_proxy environment variable and gist will use it.

Thanks to @defunkt and @indirect for writing and maintaining versions 1 through 3. Thanks to @rking and @ConradIrwin for maintaining version 4.

Licensed under the MIT license. Bug-reports, and pull requests are welcome.