The GitHub Command Line Interface is now generally available and out of beta. To get started, visit cli.github.com.

After download and install, the first step you’ll want to take is to authenticate with GitHub. Do this by running the command gh auth login. You’ll then be prompted to log into GitHub.com or GitHub Enterprise Server. The final question before authenticating will ask you to login with a web browser or paste an authentication token. After you authenticate, you’ll need to choose your default git protocol and then you are set.

You can now use any of the commands available to the CLI including, but not limited to:

  • gh gist
  • gh issue
  • gh pr
  • gh release
  • gh repo

As well as many others. At any type you can use gh help to get more information on any command. For instance, to see a list of issues for my website, simply run:

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gh issue list -R jasongaylord/jasongaylord.com

I was curious how easy it was to create a pull request and use the schedule GitHub action as I documented at jasong.us/334qCIo. To use the gh pr command, you must navigate to the physical folder of your repository. Then, you can use the command similar to this:

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gh pr create -B BASE_BRANCH_NAME -H BRANCH_NAME -t "Title of PR" -b "/schedule 2020-09-19"

Be sure to replace the BASE_BRANCH_NAME with your default branch name, BRANCH_NAME with your feature branch name, and the title and body values as you plan. You can use other switches to assign the PR to a team mate if you’d like. Upon success, you’ll receive a message similar to Creating pull request for 20200919 into master in jasongaylord/JasonGaylord.com.

Try it for yourself!

Download the GitHub CLI