Installation

The binary is called github. It does not replace the official gh, which does the authenticated half of the site far better. This one does the public half without asking you to log in.

With Go

go install github.com/tamnd/github-cli/cmd/github@latest

That puts github in $(go env GOPATH)/bin, which is ~/go/bin unless you moved it. Make sure that directory is on your PATH.

Package managers

# Homebrew (macOS)
brew install --cask tamnd/tap/github-cli

# Scoop (Windows)
scoop bucket add tamnd https://github.com/tamnd/scoop-bucket
scoop install github-cli

# apt (Debian, Ubuntu)
curl -fsSL https://tamnd.github.io/linux-repo/gpg.key | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/tamnd.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/tamnd.gpg] https://tamnd.github.io/linux-repo/apt stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/tamnd.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install github-cli

# dnf (Fedora, RHEL)
sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://tamnd.github.io/linux-repo/dnf/tamnd.repo
sudo dnf install github-cli

The Homebrew formula is a cask rather than a formula because brew install github already means GitHub Desktop.

Prebuilt binaries

Every release carries archives for Linux, macOS, Windows, and FreeBSD on amd64 and arm64, plus deb, rpm, and apk packages for Linux. Download, unpack, put github on your PATH, done.

Each release also ships an SBOM and a checksums.txt signed with keyless cosign, if you want to verify before running:

cosign verify-blob checksums.txt \
  --certificate checksums.txt.pem \
  --signature checksums.txt.sig \
  --certificate-identity-regexp 'https://github\.com/tamnd/github-cli/.*' \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com

Container image

docker run --rm ghcr.io/tamnd/github-cli:latest repo gohugoio/hugo

From source

git clone https://github.com/tamnd/github-cli
cd github-cli
make build        # produces ./bin/github
./bin/github version

Checking the install

github version
github doctor

doctor is the more useful of the two. It reports whether the site answers, whether the page still carries the payload every reader expects, whether the cache is writable, what pacing this run is using, and whether you have a token set that this tool is about to ignore.