Comment by arp242 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by arp242 | Hacker News Reader

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"gh pr" runs several git commands (5 to be exact):

  % gh pr checkout 132
  RUN: git fetch origin refs/pull/132/head:joris_tests_20230119
  From github.com:BurntSushi/toml-test
   * [new ref]         refs/pull/132/head -> joris_tests_20230119
  RUN: git checkout joris_tests_20230119
  Switched to branch 'joris_tests_20230119'
  RUN: git config branch.joris_tests_20230119.remote origin
  RUN: git config branch.joris_tests_20230119.pushRemote origin
  RUN: git config branch.joris_tests_20230119.merge refs/pull/132/head

It just so happens that my local "gh" build prints this as I was debugging a problem some months ago and I never bothered building it again without this on account of being a lazy git.

The entire reason I have "gh" on my system is to easily check out PRs and to set them up so I can push to them with a minimum of mucking about. I use it for noting else.

I do agree it would be nicer to also add the git commands (plural!), but I suspect they just didn't because it's multiple commands to get the same experience. That is: UI reasons, not anything sinister.

> proprietary "gh cli"

It's not "proprietary": https://github.com/cli/cli/blob/trunk/LICENSE

And as you can see in the output above, it's just a wrapper around some git commands. If you want to call this "proprietary" then you should also call tig, got, and other alternative interfaces to git "proprietary".

> It's not "proprietary"

Fair. It is non-standard, published via Microsoft, and even named after the single product that it supports, but if we're splitting hairs it does technically have an open-source license. So I removed the term "proprietary."

Non-standard is fair. I do think it matters, because certainly in free software/open source context "proprietary" tends to have a pretty specific meaning.

The thing is, almost all of "gh" is an interface for GitHub: you can list issues, close issues, comment on issues, do all sorts of stuff with Actions, releases, your account", etc.

And oh, it can also do some limited stuff with git, kind of as an extra. Looking at the gh help output, the only commands are "gh repo {clone,sync}" and "gh pr {checkout,diff,merge}". I guess the repo clone/sync was added for completeness sake (other repo subcommands all relate to GitHub UI stuff), and gh pr is there because all of that is kind of non-trivial if you also want to be able to push to other people's PRs (not impossible or even difficult, just non-trivial and somewhat non-obvious).

In short, I think people are assuming a lot about all of this and there really isn't that much to see.

Actually the `gh clone` wraps up all the complexity with enterprise authn/authz, Tokens/PATs, multi-org SSO/MFA, etc really well. This alone is the reason I use gh.

Ah right, I never actually used the command.

> "gh pr" runs several git commands (5 to be exact):

Only the first two are actually important though (the rest smell like an antifeature to me in fact). I have them both as a single `git pr <remote> <PR>` alias:

    [alias]
        pr = !sh -c 'git fetch $1 pull/$2/head:pr-$1-$2 && git checkout pr-$1-$2' -

...and an equivalent for GitLab:

    [alias]
        mr = !sh -c 'git fetch $1 merge-requests/$2/head:mr-$1-$2 && git checkout mr-$1-$2' -

You could easily hardcode remote to be "origin" and get what `gh` does.

> the rest smell like an antifeature to me in fact

I believe without it you can't push to a PR? As a maintainer, I find it quite useful: if a PR is essentially fine but needs a minor/trivial edit (typo, maybe add a few lines of documentation, extremely minor code style changes) then I typically just make then myself as I don't want to bother the submitter for that. Faster and easier for me, faster and easier for them.

Either way, of course all of this is possible without the "gh" tool – no one claimed it's not, – but it's a lot easier than "stick these commands in your git config", especially for people not well versed in git.

Of course you can. You can always use the long form, or set it up explicitly - I sometimes do that too as a maintainer. Setting this up by default when you just want to checkout means that it's easy for you to push things to other people's repos by accident.

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