GitHub has launched a CLI tool in beta, giving users the option of an official way to do Git management in a comfortingly 20th century manner.
The Microsoft tentacle said GitHub CLI will bring “pull requests, issues, and other GitHub concepts to the terminal next to where you are already working with git and your code.” Or, as the GitHub page for the tool puts it, “It’s GitHub, but, you know, on your CLI.”
The tool comes in Mac and Windows flavours, naturally, as well as Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora/Centos and Arch flavours of Linux.
As for functionality, according to a blog post by GitHub staffer Billy Griffin, “We started with issues and pull requests because many developers use them every day.”
So, issue commands include checkout, create, list, status, and view, with PR offering the same plus checkout.
That’s for starters, with Griffin adding, “we’re even more excited about the future as we explore what it looks like to build a truly delightful experience with GitHub on the command line. As GitHub CLI continues to make it even more seamless to contribute to projects on GitHub, the sky’s the limit on what we can achieve together.
The tool’s own GitHub page adds, “For many years, hub was the unofficial GitHub CLI tool. gh is a new project for us to explore what an official GitHub CLI tool can look like with a fundamentally different design. While both tools bring GitHub to the terminal, hub behaves as a proxy to git and gh is a standalone tool.”
Meanwhile, GitHub has announced the opening of an Indian subsidiary, GitHub India Private Limited.
GitHub COO Erica Brescia said in a blog post that the move would better serve its Indian “community” which has “the third-largest number of active developers on GitHub and 22 percent growth over the past year, adding to an already significant base.”
It may also have something to do with the Indian government’s expected imposition of new regulations for ”platform operators”. Amongst other things, these would require platforms with more than five million users to set up Indian offices and proactively monitor content. GitHub recently signed up to efforts calling on the authorities to make the regulations less onerous. But it seems it might be preparing for the worst as well.