Staying productive on the command-line

hub makes it easy to clone or create repositories, browse project pages, list known issues, ensure your local branches stay up to date, and share logs or code snippets via Gist.

hub clone dotfiles
→ git clone git://github.com/YOUR_USER/dotfiles.git


hub clone github/hub
→ git clone git://github.com/github/hub.git


cd myproject
hub sync


hub issue --limit 10


hub browse -- issues
→ open https://github.com/github/hub/issues


hub browse rbenv/ruby-build wiki
→ open https://github.com/rbenv/ruby-build/wiki


hub gist create --copy build.log
→ (the URL of the new private gist copied to clipboard)

Starting a new project has never been easier:

git init
git add .
git commit -m "And so, it begins."
hub create
→ (creates a new GitHub repository with the name of the current directory)
git push -u origin HEAD

Lowering the barrier to contributing to open-source

Whether you are beginner or an experienced contributor to open-source, hub makes it easier to fork repositories, check the CI status of a branch, and even submit pull requests from the same environment where you write & commit your code.

hub clone octocat/Spoon-Knife
cd Spoon-Knife

git checkout -b feature

git commit -am "done with feature"


hub fork --remote-name origin
→ (forking repo on GitHub...)
→ git remote add origin git@github.com:YOUR_USER/Spoon-Knife.git


git push origin feature


hub ci-status --verbose


hub pull-request
→ (opens a text editor for your pull request message)

Automating tasks for fun and profit

Scripting is much easier now that you can list or create issues, pull requests, and GitHub Releases in the format of your choice.

hub issue --assignee YOUR_USER --labels urgent


hub pr list --limit 20 --base develop --format='%t [%H] | %U%n'


hub release create --copy -F release-notes.txt v2.3.0
→ (the URL of the new release copied to clipboard)

Drop down to the API level

Even if hub doesn't support the exact feature you need, you can use hub api to manually make requests against any GitHub API—even GraphQL—and have hub handle authentication, JSON encoding/decoding, and pagination for you.

hub api repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues/123/comments --field body=@mycomment.txt


REPO="github/hub"
SHA="b0db79db"
hub api graphql --flat -f q="repo:$REPO type:pr $SHA" -f query='
  query($q: String!) {
    search(query: $q, type: ISSUE, first: 3) {
      nodes {
        ... on PullRequest {
          url
        }
      }
    }
  }
' | awk '/\.url/ { print $2 }'

See hub-api-utils for more examples.

Designed for open-source maintainers

Maintaining a project is easier when you can easily fetch from other forks, check out pull requests, close issues, and even cherry-pick commits by URL.

hub fetch mislav,cehoffman
→ git remote add mislav git://github.com/mislav/hub.git
→ git remote add cehoffman git://github.com/cehoffman/hub.git
→ git fetch --multiple mislav cehoffman


hub pr checkout 134
→ (creates a new branch with the contents of the pull request)

git push


hub issue update 134 --state closed


hub am -3 https://github.com/github/hub/pull/134


hub cherry-pick https://github.com/xoebus/hub/commit/177eeb8


hub compare v0.9..v1.0


hub compare --url feature | pbcopy