GitHub has announced the general availability of its new command-line tool, GitHub CLI. The tool lets you issue pull requests and work with issues from the command line to give developers a more seamless way to work with GitHub repositories from the command line.

The team behind GitHub CLI says it reduces context switching, helps you focus, and enables you to more easily script and create your own workflows.

There was already a command line way of working with GitHub using the third party Hub tool which adds extra features and commands that make working with GitHub easier.

GitHub CLI, by contrast, simply provides command line ways to issue GitHub commands.

The decision to go with GitHub CLI rather than building on Hub was a tricky one, according to the GitHub CLI page. In a section on "why didn't you just build on top of hub", the team says they weighed the different possibilities and decided to start fresh:

"without the constraints of 10 years of design decisions that Hub has baked in and without the assumption that Hub can be safely aliased to Git. We also wanted to be more opinionated and focused on GitHub workflows, and doing this with Hub had the risk of alienating many Hub users who love the existing tool and expected it to work in the way they were used to."

GitHub CLI 1.0 lets you run your entire GitHub workflow from the terminal, from issues through releases. You can also call the GitHub API to script most actions, and set a custom alias for any command. The tool also provides a way to connect to the GitHub Enterprise Server as well as to GitHub.com

You can create pull requests and issues without leaving the command line. If you use the tool to create pull requests, it also automatically creates a fork when you don’t already have one, and it pushes your branch and creates your pull request to get your change merged.

More Information

GitHub CLI Home Page

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