About GitHub CLI extensions
GitHub CLI extensions are custom GitHub CLI commands that anyone can create and use. For more information about how to use GitHub CLI extensions, see "Using GitHub CLI extensions."
You need a repository for each extension that you create. The repository name must start with gh-
. The rest of the repository name is the name of the extension. The repository must have an executable file at its root with the same name as the repository or a set of precompiled binary executables attached to a release.
Note
When relying on an executable script, we recommend using a bash script because bash is a widely available interpreter. You may use non-bash scripts, but the user must have the necessary interpreter installed in order to use the extension. If you would prefer to not rely on users having interpreters installed, consider a precompiled extension.
Creating an interpreted extension with gh extension create
Note
Running gh extension create
with no arguments will start an interactive wizard.
You can use the gh extension create
command to create a project for your extension, including a bash script that contains some starter code.
-
Set up a new extension by using the
gh extension create
subcommand. ReplaceEXTENSION-NAME
with the name of your extension.gh extension create EXTENSION-NAME
-
Follow the printed instructions to finalize and optionally publish your extension.
Creating a precompiled extension in Go with gh extension create
You can use the --precompiled=go
argument to create a Go-based project for your extension, including Go scaffolding, workflow scaffolding, and starter code.
-
Set up a new extension by using the
gh extension create
subcommand. ReplaceEXTENSION-NAME
with the name of your extension and specify--precompiled=go
.gh extension create --precompiled=go EXTENSION-NAME
-
Follow the printed instructions to finalize and optionally publish your extension.
Creating a non-Go precompiled extension with gh extension create
You can use the --precompiled=other
argument to create a project for your non-Go precompiled extension, including workflow scaffolding.
-
Set up a new extension by using the
gh extension create
subcommand. ReplaceEXTENSION-NAME
with the name of your extension and specify--precompiled=other
.gh extension create --precompiled=other EXTENSION-NAME
-
Add some initial code for your extension in your compiled language of choice.
-
Fill in
script/build.sh
with code to build your extension to ensure that your extension can be built automatically. -
Follow the printed instructions to finalize and optionally publish your extension.
Creating an interpreted extension manually
-
Create a local directory called
gh-EXTENSION-NAME
for your extension. ReplaceEXTENSION-NAME
with the name of your extension. For example,gh-whoami
. -
In the directory that you created, add an executable file with the same name as the directory.
Note
Make sure that your file is executable. On Unix, you can execute
chmod +x file_name
in the command line to makefile_name
executable. On Windows, you can rungit init -b main
,git add file_name
, thengit update-index --chmod=+x file_name
. -
Write your script in the executable file. For example:
#!/usr/bin/env bash set -e exec gh api user --jq '"You are @\(.login) (\(.name))."'
-
From your directory, install the extension as a local extension.
gh extension install .
-
Verify that your extension works. Replace
EXTENSION-NAME
with the name of your extension. For example,whoami
.gh EXTENSION-NAME
-
From your directory, create a repository to publish your extension. Replace
EXTENSION-NAME
with the name of your extension.git init -b main git add . && git commit -m "initial commit" gh repo create gh-EXTENSION-NAME --source=. --public --push
-
Optionally, to help other users discover your extension, add the repository topic
gh-extension
. This will make the extension appear on thegh-extension
topic page. For more information about how to add a repository topic, see "Classifying your repository with topics."
Tips for writing interpreted GitHub CLI extensions
Handling arguments and flags
All command line arguments following a gh my-extension-name
command will be passed to the extension script. In a bash script, you can reference arguments with $1
, $2
, etc. You can use arguments to take user input or to modify the behavior of the script.
For example, this script handles multiple flags. When the script is called with the -h
or --help
flag, the script prints help text instead of continuing execution. When the script is called with the --name
flag, the script sets the next value after the flag to name_arg
. When the script is called with the --verbose
flag, the script prints a different greeting.
#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -e
verbose=""
name_arg=""
while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do
case "$1" in
--verbose)
verbose=1
;;
--name)
name_arg="$2"
shift
;;
-h|--help)
echo "Add help text here."
exit 0
;;
esac
shift
done
if [ -z "$name_arg" ]
then
echo "You haven't told us your name."
elif [ -z "$verbose" ]
then
echo "Hi $name_arg"
else
echo "Hello and welcome, $name_arg"
fi
Calling core commands in non-interactive mode
Some GitHub CLI core commands will prompt the user for input. When scripting with those commands, a prompt is often undesirable. To avoid prompting, supply the necessary information explicitly via arguments.
For example, to create an issue programmatically, specify the title and body:
gh issue create --title "My Title" --body "Issue description"
Fetching data programmatically
Many core commands support the --json
flag for fetching data programmatically. For example, to return a JSON object listing the number, title, and mergeability status of pull requests:
gh pr list --json number,title,mergeStateStatus
If there is not a core command to fetch specific data from GitHub, you can use the gh api
command to access the GitHub API. For example, to fetch information about the current user:
gh api user
All commands that output JSON data also have options to filter that data into something more immediately usable by scripts. For example, to get the current user's name:
gh api user --jq '.name'
For more information, see gh help formatting
.
Creating a precompiled extension manually
-
Create a local directory called
gh-EXTENSION-NAME
for your extension. ReplaceEXTENSION-NAME
with the name of your extension. For example,gh-whoami
. -
In the directory you created, add some source code. For example:
package main import ( "github.com/cli/go-gh" "fmt" ) func main() { args := []string{"api", "user", "--jq", `"You are @\(.login) (\(.name))"` } stdOut, _, err := gh.Exec(args...) if err != nil { fmt.Println(err) return } fmt.Println(stdOut.String()) }
-
From your directory, install the extension as a local extension.
gh extension install .
-
Build your code. For example, with Go, replacing
YOUR-USERNAME
with your GitHub username:go mod init github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/gh-whoami go mod tidy go build
-
Verify that your extension works. Replace
EXTENSION-NAME
with the name of your extension. For example,whoami
.gh EXTENSION-NAME
-
From your directory, create a repository to publish your extension. Replace
EXTENSION-NAME
with the name of your extension.Note
Be careful not to commit the binary produced by your compilation step to version control.
git init -b main echo "gh-EXTENSION-NAME" >> .gitignore git add main.go go.* .gitignore && git commit -m 'Initial commit' gh repo create "gh-EXTENSION-NAME"
-
Create a release to share your precompiled extension with others. Compile for each platform you want to support, attaching each binary to a release as an asset. Binary executables attached to releases must follow a naming convention and have a suffix of OS-ARCHITECTURE[EXTENSION].
For example, an extension named
whoami
compiled for Windows 64bit would have the namegh-whoami-windows-amd64.exe
while the same extension compiled for Linux 32bit would have the namegh-whoami-linux-386
. To see an exhaustive list of OS and architecture combinations recognized bygh
, see this source code.Note
For your extension to run properly on Windows, its asset file must have a
.exe
extension. No extension is needed for other operating systems.Releases can be created from the command line. For example:
git tag v1.0.0 git push origin v1.0.0 GOOS=windows GOARCH=amd64 go build -o gh-EXTENSION-NAME-windows-amd64.exe GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 go build -o gh-EXTENSION-NAME-linux-amd64 GOOS=darwin GOARCH=amd64 go build -o gh-EXTENSION-NAME-darwin-amd64 gh release create v1.0.0 ./*amd64*
-
Optionally, to help other users discover your extension, add the repository topic
gh-extension
. This will make the extension appear on thegh-extension
topic page. For more information about how to add a repository topic, see "Classifying your repository with topics."
Tips for writing precompiled GitHub CLI extensions
Automating releases
Consider adding the gh-extension-precompile action to a workflow in your project. This action will automatically produce cross-compiled Go binaries for your extension and supplies build scaffolding for non-Go precompiled extensions.
Using GitHub CLI features from Go-based extensions
Consider using go-gh, a Go library that exposes pieces of gh
functionality for use in extensions.
Next steps
To see more examples of GitHub CLI extensions, look at repositories with the gh-extension
topic.