Setting up gcli for use with an account

Creating issues on GitHub requires an account which we need to generate an authentication token for gcli.

If you want to test this with a different forge than GitHub look at the tutorial for other forges.

Log into your GitHub account and click on your account icon in the top right corner. Then choose the Settings option. Scroll down and choose Developer settings on the bottom of the left column. Under Personal access tokens choose Tokens (classic).

Click on Generate new token (classic).

Set a useful name such as gcli in the Note field, set the expiration to No expiration and allow the following Scopes:

• repo
• workflow
• admin:public_key
• gist

Then create the token. It'll be printed in green. Do not share it!

Now we need to tell gcli about this new token. To do this, create a configuration file for gcli - on Windows you need to do this from the MSYS2 Shell:

$ mkdir -p ${HOME}/.config/gcli
$ vi ${HOME}/.config/gcli/config

Obviously, you can choose any other editor of your choice. Put the following into this file:

defaults {
    editor=vi
    github-default-account=my-github-account
}

my-github-account {
    token=<token-goes-here>
    account=<account-name>
    forge-type=github
}

Replace the <token-goes-here> with the previously generated token and the <account> with your account name.

If you now run

$ gcli -t github repos

you should get a list of your repos. If not, check again that you did all the steps above correctly.