xsh-lib/git

xsh Library - git.

Utilities for working with git and GitHub from the shell, packaged as an xsh library.

About xsh and its libraries, check out the xsh document.

Requirements

xsh-lib/git is tested in CI (GitHub Actions) on every push and pull request, across the following shell/OS combinations:

Shell	Version	OS	Tested
bash	3.2	macOS	✅
bash	4.4	Linux (rockylinux:8)	✅
bash	5.x	Linux (ubuntu-latest)	✅
bash	5.x	macOS (Homebrew)	✅
zsh	5.x	Linux (ubuntu-latest)	✅
zsh	5.x	macOS	✅

zsh utilities run under xsh's ksh emulation and require xsh ≥ 0.7.0.

This project is still at version 0.x and should be considered immature.

Dependency

1. xsh-lib/core — should be loaded before this library.

   xsh load xsh-lib/core

2. Some utilities have additional dependencies (e.g. gh, ssh, w3m, collaborator). See the per-utility help for details.

Installation

Assume xsh is already installed.

To load this library into xsh:

xsh load xsh-lib/git

The loaded library is referenced by the name git.

The leading slash in an LPUR (e.g. xsh /string/upper) is reserved for the default library xsh-lib/core. For this library, write the lib name explicitly: xsh git/<package>/<util>.

Usage

List the utilities exposed by this library:

xsh list git

Get help on any utility:

xsh help git/<package>/<util>

Available utilities

Utility	Kind	Purpose
git/hub/account-for-email	function	Walk XSH_GIT_HUB_ACCOUNTS, return the account whose email matches.
git/hub/account-for-org	function	Walk XSH_GIT_HUB_ACCOUNTS, return the account that defaults for the given GitHub org. First-match-wins.
git/hub/account-for-repo	function	Derive the account from git config user.email in the current repo (delegates to account-for-email).
git/hub/run	function	Run a command with a chosen gh account active, isolated from concurrent shell sessions via per-call GH_CONFIG_DIR.
git/hub/ssh	script	SSH wrapper for core.sshCommand: picks the right per-account key from the repo owner in git's command line.
git/hub/collaborator	function	Add, remove, or list collaborators of the current GitHub repo. Requires collaborator and w3m.
git/rebase-i-in-dumb-term	script	Helper for running git rebase -i in dumb terminals.

The account profile env var: XSH_GIT_HUB_ACCOUNTS

The git/hub/* utilities read a single env var that describes every gh account you operate. Whitespace-separated records, each with three colon-separated fields:

<account> : <email> : <org>[,<org>...]

Field	Cardinality	Meaning
account	required	gh account name; also the suffix in ~/.ssh/github-<account>.
email	0..1	Email tied to this account by ~/.gitconfig includeIf rules. Empty for bot-style accounts with no per-directory binding.
orgs	0..N	Comma-separated GitHub orgs this account defaults for. Read by account-for-org and git/hub/ssh.

Example:

export XSH_GIT_HUB_ACCOUNTS="alice:alice@example.com:alice,xsh-alice bob:bob@corp.io:bob-corp"

If two records list the same org, first match wins — the earlier record's account becomes the default for that org. The other account is still reachable via the explicit SSH alias URL git@github-<account>:<org>/<repo>.git.

Multi-gh-account workflow

If you operate multiple GitHub accounts simultaneously (e.g. personal + work) and rely on ~/.gitconfig's includeIf "gitdir:..." rules to switch identities per directory tree, this library makes it transparent to push, PR, and clone against the right account without ever mutating the global active account in ~/.config/gh.

1. Map your accounts via the env var described above.

2. Use git/hub/run as a transparent wrapper around any gh command (account auto-derived from the current repo's user.email):

   xsh git/hub/run -- gh pr create --fill
   xsh git/hub/run -u alice-corp -- gh pr list   # explicit override

   Each call snapshots ~/.config/gh to a private mode-700 tempdir, runs gh auth switch -u <account> against the copy, and exports GH_CONFIG_DIR only for the wrapped command. The real config is never mutated, so other shell sessions and credential-helper invocations are unaffected — even when several git/hub/run calls are in flight at the same time.

3. Wire git/hub/ssh into git for transparent SSH routing on bare git@github.com:<org>/<repo>.git URLs:

   xsh imports git/hub/ssh
   git config --global core.sshCommand git-hub-ssh

   Now git clone git@github.com:<org>/<repo>.git (or gh repo clone, or the web "Clone with SSH" copy-paste) auto-resolves to the right ~/.ssh/github-<account> key — without rewriting the URL stored in the cloned origin. SSH key selection happens in the wrapper based on the org parsed from git's git-{upload,receive}-pack command line.

   The wrapper falls through to plain ssh for any host that isn't git@github.com (CodeCommit, EC2, the per-account github-<name> aliases, etc.) and for any org that isn't in XSH_GIT_HUB_ACCOUNTS — letting your existing SSH config handle those cases unchanged.

Development

Run the test suite:

xsh load xsh-lib/git
bash test.sh

For local iteration against a working copy that hasn't been pushed yet, link the workspace as a development library and re-run with XSH_DEV=1:

xsh lib-dev-manager link xsh-lib/git /path/to/parent-of-this-repo
XSH_DEV=1 bash test.sh

Network-dependent tests (real gh round-trips) are skipped by default. Enable them with XSH_GIT_TEST_NETWORK=1 once you have a logged-in gh account available.

CI runs the same test.sh across the shell/OS matrix above for every push and PR. See the CI workflow.