Ubuntu Manpage: git-hub - Git command line interface to GitHub

Name

       git-hub - Git command line interface to GitHub

SYNOPSIS

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

DESCRIPTION

       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.

GLOBAL 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 <https://github.com/settings/tokens/new> (check GitHub docs
<https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/authenticating-to-github/
creating-a-personal-access-token> 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.

-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

Author

       Leandro Lucarella <leandro.lucarella@dunnhumby.com>

Copyright

       2013 dunnhumby Germany GmbH

devel                                              2025-11-26                                         git-hub(1)