git-hub(1) · carta

Usage

git hub [global options] <command> [options] [arguments]

Overview

git hub is a simple command line interface to github, enabling most useful GitHub tasks (like creating and listing pull request or issues) to be accessed directly through the git command line.

To use this command you'll probably need to make an initial configuration to get authorization from GitHub. To do this you can use the setup command. See the CONFIGURATION section for more configuration options.

Options

-h, --help: Show this help and exit.

--version: Show program's version number and exit.

-v, --verbose: Be more verbose (can be specified multiple times to get extra verbosity)

-s, --silent: Be less verbose (can be specified multiple times to get less verbosity)

Commands

setup

This command performs an initial setup to connect to GitHub. It basically asks for a username and a GitHub Personal Access Token (PAT), which is needed to perform most actions.

The token will be stored it in the Git configuration variable hub.oauthtoken for future use. If you don't have one, you can create it (check GitHub docs if you need more help). Make sure your PAT has at least repo and user scope.

The username is also stored for future use in the hub.username variable. If the base URL is specified, it is stored in hub.baseurl too.

By default configuration is stored in the repository's .git/config file (using git config). If you want your configuration to be global to your user or system-wide, use the --global or --system option respectively. These options are passed straight to git config.

-u USERNAME, --username=USERNAME: GitHub's username (login name), will be stored in the configuration variable hub.username. If an e-mail is provided, then a username matching that e-mail will be searched and used instead, if found (for this to work the e-mail must be part of the public profile).

-o TOKEN, --oauthtoken=TOKEN: GitHub's Personal Access Token (PAT), will be stored in the configuration variable hub.username. If an e-mail is provided, then a username matching that e-mail will be searched and used instead, if found (for this to work the e-mail must be part of the public profile).

-b URL, --baseurl=URL: GitHub's base URL to use to access the API. Set this when your GitHub API is in another location other than the default (Enterprise servers usually use https://host/api/v3).

--global: Store settings in the global configuration (see --global option in git config(1) for details).

--system: Store settings in the system configuration (see --system option in git config(1) for details).

clone REPO [DEST]

This command is used to clone REPO, a GitHub repository, to a DEST directory (defaults to the name of the project being cloned). If the repository is specified in <owner>/<project> form, the REPO will be used as upstream and a personal fork will be looked up. If none is found, a new fork will be created. In both cases, the fork will be cloned instead of the upstream repository. The REPO can be specified as a regular clone URL too (http, ssh, git), in that case the URL will be inspected and the hub.urltype will be set as appropriate.

If only <project> is specified as REPO, then the configuration hub.username is used as <owner>, and the parent repository is looked up at GitHub to determine the real upstream repository.

The upstream repository is cloned as --upstreamremote (or hub.upstreamremote, upstream by default), the remote for the fork is added as --forkremote (or hub.forkremote, fork by default) and the fork is set as the git remote.pushdefault (so pushing will hit the fork by default), unless --no-triangular is used (please see the option for more details).

After cloning and fetching, the git configuration variables hub.upstream, hub.upstreamremote and hub.forkremote are set in the new cloned repo (see CONFIGURATION).

-U NAME, --upstreamremote=NAME: Use NAME as the upstream remote repository name instead of the default 'upstream').

-F NAME, --forkremote=NAME: Use NAME as the fork remote repository name instead of the default 'fork').

-t, --triangular

Use Git's triangular workflow configuration (this is the default). This option clones from the parent/upstream repository, and adds the fork as a remote repository. Then sets the remote.pushdefault Git option and hub.forkremote git-hub option to the just cloned repository.

The effect of this having the upstream repository used by default when you pull but using your fork when you push, which is typically what you want when using GitHub's pull requests.

Git version 1.8.3 or newer is needed to use this option (and 1.8.4 or newer is recommended due to some issues in 1.8.3 related to this).

To change the default you can set the option hub.triangular. See CONFIGURATION for details.

--no-triangular

Don't use Git's triangular workflow configuration (this is only available for backwards compatibility but is not recommended). This option clones from the forked repository instead of cloning the upstream/parent repo, so both pulls and pushes will be done with the fork by default.

This option could be also used to clone a GitHub repository without forking it, but some functionality of the tool will be lost.

GIT CLONE OPTIONS: Any standard git clone option can be passed. Not all of them might make sense when cloning a GitHub repo to be used with this tool though.

This command will run the hub.hookscript on some events, please have a look at HOOK SCRIPT for more details.

issue

This command is used to manage GitHub issues through a set of subcommands.

list

Show a list of open issues.

-c, --closed: Show closed issues instead.

-C, --created-by-me: Show only issues created by me

-A, --assigned-to-me: Show only issues assigned to me

show ISSUE [ISSUE ...]: Show issues identified by ISSUE.

new

Create a new issue.

The content of the template files ISSUE_TEMPLATE or ISSUE_TEMPLATE.md will be added to the issue message if any of those template files is found in the top-level directory of the project, the .github directory or the .git directory. The order for template files lookups matters and it follows the order as described above for template file names and directories. And only the content of the first template found will be added.

-m MSG, --message=MSG: Issue title (and description). The first line is used as the issue title and any text after an empty line is used as the optional body. If this option is not used, the default GIT_EDITOR is opened to write one.

-l LABEL, --label=LABEL: Attach LABEL to the issue (can be specified multiple times to set multiple labels).

-a USER, --assign=USER: Assign a user to the issue. USER must be a valid GitHub login name.

-M ID, --milestone=ID: Assign the milestone identified by the number ID to the issue.

--no-template: Do not add the template content to the message.

update ISSUE

Similar to new but update an existing issue identified by ISSUE.

A convenient shortcut to close an issue is provided by the close subcommand.

-m MSG, --message=MSG: New issue title (and description). The first line is used as the issue title and any text after an empty line is used as the optional body.

-t TITLE, --title=TITLE: New issue title.

-e, --edit-message: Open the default GIT_EDITOR to edit the current title (and description) of the issue.

-o, --open: Reopen the issue.

-c, --close: Close the issue.

-l LABEL, --label=LABEL: If one or more labels are specified, they will replace the current issue labels. Otherwise the labels are unchanged. If one of the labels is empty, the labels will be cleared (so you can use -l'' to clear the labels of an issue.

-a USER, --assign=USER: Assign a user to the issue. USER must be a valid GitHub login name.

-M ID, --milestone=ID: Assign the milestone identified by the number ID to the issue.

comment ISSUE

Add a new comment to an existing issue identified by ISSUE.

-m MSG, --message=MSG: Comment to be added to the issue. If this option is not used, the default GIT_EDITOR is opened to write the comment.

close ISSUE

Alias for update --close. (+ comment if --message or --edit-message is specified). Closes issue identified by ISSUE.

-m MSG, --message=MSG: Add a comment to the issue before closing it.

-e, --edit-message: Open the default GIT_EDITOR to write a comment to be added to the issue before closing it.

pull

This command is used to manage GitHub pull requests. Since pull requests in GitHub are also issues, most of the subcommands are repeated from the issue command for convenience. Only the list and new commands are really different, and attach and rebase are added.

list

Show a list of open pull requests.

--closed: Show closed pull requests instead.

show PULL [PULL ...]: Alias for issue show.

checkout PULL ...: Checkout the remote branch (head) of the pull request. This command first fetches the head reference from the pull request and then calls the standard git checkout command and any extra argument will be passed to git checkout as-is, after the reference that was just fetched. Remember this creates a detached checkout by default, use -b if you want to create a new branch based on the pull request. Please take a look at git checkout help for more details.

new [HEAD]

Create a new pull request. If HEAD is specified, it will be used as the branch (or git ref) where your changes are implemented. Otherwise the current branch is used. If the branch used as head is not pushed to your fork remote, a push will be automatically done before creating the pull request.

The repository to issue the pull request from is taken from the hub.forkrepo configuration, which defaults to hub.username/<hub.upstream project part>.

The content of the template files PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE or PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md will be added to the pull request message if any of those template files is found in the top-level directory of the project, the .github directory or the .git directory. The order for template files lookups matters and it follows the order as described above for template file names and directories. And only the content of the first template found will be added.

-m MSG, --message=MSG: Pull request title (and description). The first line is used as the pull request title and any text after an empty line is used as the optional body. If this option is not used, the default GIT_EDITOR is opened. If the HEAD branch have a proper description (see git branch --edit-description), that description will be used as the default message in the editor and if not, the message of the last commit will be used instead.

-l LABEL, --label=LABEL: Attach LABEL to the pull request (can be specified multiple times to set multiple labels).

-a USER, --assign=USER: Assign a user to the pull request. USER must be a valid GitHub login name.

-M ID, --milestone=ID: Assign the milestone identified by the number ID to the pull request.

-b BASE, --base=BASE: Branch (or git ref) you want your changes pulled into. By default the tracking branch (branch.<ref>.merge configuration variable) is used or the configuration hub.pullbase if not tracking a remote branch. If none is present an error will be displayed.

-c NAME, --create-branch=NAME: Create a new remote branch with (with name NAME) as the real head for the pull request instead of using the HEAD name passed as HEAD. This is useful to create a pull request for a hot-fix you committed to your regular HEAD without creating a branch first.

-f, --force-push: Force the push operations. Use with care!

-d, --draft: Create a draft pull request. Draft pull requests cannot be merged, and code owners are not automatically requested to review draft pull requests.

attach ISSUE [HEAD]

Convert the issue identified by ISSUE to a pull request by attaching commits to it. The branch (or git ref) where your changes are implemented can be optionally specified with HEAD (otherwise the current branch is used). This subcommand is very similar to the new subcommand, please refer to it for more details.

Please note you can only attach commits to issues if you have commit access to the repository or if you are assigned to the issue.

-m MSG, --message=MSG: Add a comment to the issue/new pull request.

-e, --edit-message: Open the default GIT_EDITOR to write a comment to be added to the issue/new pull request. The default message is taken from the --message option if present, otherwise the branch description or the first commit message is used as with the new subcommand.

-b BASE, --base=BASE: Same as pull new, please see the details there.

-c NAME, --create-branch=NAME: Create a new remote branch with (with name NAME) as the real head for the pull request instead of using the HEAD name passed as HEAD. This is useful to create a pull request for a hot-fix you committed to your regular HEAD without creating a branch first.

-f, --force-push: Force the push operations. Use with care!

rebase PULL

Close a pull request identified by PULL by rebasing its base branch (specified in the pull request) instead of merging as GitHub's Merge Button™ would do.

If the operation is successful, a comment will be posted informing the new HEAD commit of the branch that has been rebased and the pull request will be closed.

The type of URL used to fetch and push can be specified through the hub.pullurltype configuration variable (see CONFIGURATION for more details). Your working copy should stay the same ideally, if everything went OK.

The operations performed by this subcommand are roughly these:

1.: git stash

2.: git fetch pullhead

3.: git checkout -b tmp FETCH_HEAD

4.: git pull --rebase pullbase

5.: git push pullbase

6.: git checkout oldhead

7.: git branch -D tmp

8.: git stash pop

If hub.forcerebase is set to "true" (the default), --force will be passed to rebase (not to be confused with this command option --force-push which will force the push), otherwise (if is "false") a regular rebase is performed. When the rebase is forced, all the commits in the pull request are re-committed, so the Committer and CommitterDate metadata is updated in the commits, showing the person that performed the rebase and the time of the rebase instead of the original values, so providing more useful information. As a side effect, the hashes of the commits will change.

If conflicts are found, the command is interrupted, similarly to how git rebase would do. The user should either --abort the rebasing, --skip the conflicting commit or resolve the conflict and --continue. When using one of these actions, you have to omit the PULL argument.

-m MSG, --message=MSG: Use this message for the comment instead of the default. Specify an empty message (-m'') to completely omit the comment.

-e, --edit-message: Open the default GIT_EDITOR to write the comment.

--force-push: Force the push operations. Use with care!

-p, --pause: Pause the rebase just before the results are pushed and the issue is merged. To resume the pull request rebasing (push the changes upstream and close the issue), just use the --continue action. This is particularly useful for testing.

-u, --stash-include-untracked: Passes the --include-untracked option to stash. If used all untracked files are also stashed and then cleaned up with git clean, leaving the working directory in a very clean state, which avoid conflicts when checking out the pull request to rebase.

-a, --stash-all: Passes the --all option to stash. Is like --stash-include-untracked but the ignored files are stashed and cleaned in addition to the untracked files, which completely removes the possibility of conflicts when checking out the pull request to rebase.

-D, --delete-branch: Delete the pull request branch if the rebase was successful. This is similar to press the "Delete Branch" Button (TM) in the web interface after merging.

Actions:

--continue: Continue an ongoing rebase.

--abort: Abort an ongoing rebase.

--skip: Skip current patch in an ongoing rebase and continue.

update PULL: Alias for issue update.

comment PULL: Alias for issue comment.

close PULL: Alias for issue close.

Hook script

If the git configuration hub.hookscript is present, it will be used as a (shell) script to execute on certain events. Some data is passed as environment variables to the script. All events will set the HUB_HOOK environment variable with the name of the hook being executed.

NOTE: This is an experimental feature, so it is only enabled for one event only so far.

Available hooks (events):

postclone

Executed after a clone command was done successfully. The script will be run with the freshly cloned repository directory as the current working directory, so the git configuration just done by the clone command is available (for example, git config hub.forkremote will get the fork remote).

The following extra environment variables are defined:

HUB_TRIANGULAR: will be set to true if the clone was done in triangular mode and to false otherwise.

HUB_FETCHREMOTE: will be set to hub.forkremote if triangular was used and to hub.upstreamremote otherwise.

This hook is useful to set some extra git configuration that should be enabled only when cloning a repository via this tool. For example, to prune the fork remote when it is updated, but only when triangular was used in the clone you can use:

git config --global hub.hookscript 'if test "$HUB_HOOK" = postclone && $HUB_TRIANGULAR ; then git config remote.fork.prune true; fi'

Configuration

This program use the git configuration facilities to get its configuration from. These are the git config keys used:

hub.username: Your GitHub username. [default: current OS username]

hub.oauthtoken required

This is the authorization token obtained via the setup command. Even when required, you shouldn't need to set this variable manually. Use the setup command instead.

If you don't want to store the token in plain text, you can also specify a command by prefixing a !. The output of that command will be used as the token. The command will be run with the default shell.

For example: oauthtoken = !password-manager ~/my.db get github-oauth-token.

hub.upstream required: Blessed repository used to get the issues from and make the pull requests to. The format is <owner>/<project>. This option can be automatically set by the clone command and is not really required by it or the setup command.

hub.upstreamremote: Remote name for accessing the upstream repository [default: upstream].

hub.forkrepo: Your blessed repository fork. The format is <owner>/<project>. Used to set the head for your pull requests. [default: <username>/(upstream <project> part)]

hub.forkremote: Remote name for accessing your fork. Used to push branches before creating a pull request. [default: fork]

hub.pullbase: Default remote branch (or git reference) you want your changes pulled into when creating a pull request. [default: master]

hub.urltype: Type of URL to use when an URL from a GitHub API is needed (for example, when 'pull rebase' is used). At the time of writing it could be ssh_url or clone_url for HTTP). See GitHub's API documentation[1] for more details or options. [default: ssh_url]

hub.baseurl: GitHub's base URL to use to access the API. Set this when your GitHub API is in another location other than the default (Enterprise servers usually use https://host/api/v3). This will be prepended to all GitHub API calls and it has to be a full URL, not just something like "www.example.com/api/v3/".

hub.forcerebase: If is set to "true", --force will be passed to rebase. If is set to "false" a regular rebase is performed. See the pull rebase command for details. [default: true]

hub.triangular: Makes --triangular for clone if set to "true" (boolean value). See clone documentation for details.

hub.hookscript: Script to run on certain events. Please have a look at HOOK SCRIPT for more details.

[1] https://developer.github.com/v3/pulls/#get-a-single-pull-request

Files

This program creates some temporary files in the '.git' directory during its operation. The contents of these files can be used for debugging/recovery purposes if necessary.

HUB_EDITMSG: This file is used to take input from the user, e.g. issue comments, pull request title & description etc. If, after accepting user input, the command given by the user fails for some reason, then the entered text can still be retrieved from this file.

HUB_PULL_REBASING: This file is used to store various metadata information related to a rebase operation (with the primary aim of being able to rollback the repository to its original state if the rebase fails or is interrupted due to conflicts). The sole presence of this file indicates that a rebase is in progress.

Vim syntax highlight

A VIM ftdetect plugin is provided, to enable it you have to follow some steps though. All you need to do is copy (or preferably make a symbolic link) the script to ~/.vim/ftdetect/githubmsg.vim:

mkdir -p ~/.vim/ftdetect
ln -s /usr/share/vim/addons/ftdetect/githubmsg.vim ~/.vim/ftdetect/
# or if you are copying from the sources:
# ln -s ftdetect.vim ~/.vim/ftdetect/githubmsg.vim

Releases

4 releases since Debian 9 (Stretch); the text changed 2 times.

--draft since Debian 12 (Bookworm); --forkremote since Debian 10 (Buster); --no-template since Debian 12 (Bookworm); --no-triangular since Debian 10 (Buster); --oauthtoken since Debian 12 (Bookworm); --title since Debian 12 (Bookworm); --upstreamremote since Debian 10 (Buster); -F since Debian 10 (Buster); -U since Debian 10 (Buster); -d since Debian 12 (Bookworm).

--password until Debian 10 (Buster); --remote until Debian 9 (Stretch); -r until Debian 9 (Stretch).