github: pro tips

A few extras to help you work with GitHub more effectively

Quick Command Line access to branch and pull request

The following code, if you put it into your ~/.bashrc on Mac OS, will give you two new command line commands (actually bash functions) called gh and newpr, that, respectively, will open up Github in a window on the current branch, and open a new pull request on the current branch.

Notes on adapting these for Linux and Windows after the code snippet.

function current_branch() { # Gets current branch
    git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD
}

function gh_remote_path() { # Parses the 'remote path' of the repo:  username/repo
    GH_PATH=`git remote -v | grep 'origin' | tr ':' ' '  | awk '/push/ {print $3}' | sed 's/.git$//'`
    echo ${GH_PATH}
}

function gh() { # Opens current branch on Github, works for all repos
    echo 'Opening branch on Github...'
    open "https://github.com/$(gh_remote_path)/tree/$(current_branch)"
}
function newpr() { # Opens current branch on Github in the "Open a pull request" compare view
  echo 'Opening compare on Github...'
  open "https://github.com/$(gh_remote_path)/compare/$(current_branch)?expand=1"
}

Use on non-Mac systems:

• The only part of this that is likely to be Mac OS specific is the open command.
• These functions could be modified to work on the CSIL Linux systems by modifying the open command to one that opens a web page in a browser.
• For Windows, these might work if you are using a bash shell; you’d also need to modify the open command to one that works on Windows.