Remote Servers and Forges

We've touched on how to update your local branches with but pull, but what about when you want to take your awesome new branches of work and put them on a server to get them integrated or collaborate with other people?

The two main commands to get work out are but push and but pr. Let's start with but push as it's a little simpler.

Pushing

The very simple example would be to simply run but push <branch-name>.

❯ but push update-homepage

✓ Push completed successfully

  update-homepage -> origin/update-homepage ((new branch) -> 1d31833)

You can also run but push by itself. If there is only one applied branch, it will push that one. If there are several applied branches, you can choose which to push or select 'all' to push all of them.

You can also supply -d or --dry-run to see what would be pushed up.

Pull Requests

That's the simple way to push branches to your default remote and update already pushed ones.

The other common thing to do is to open Pull Requests on GitHub. GitButler's CLI has a built in command for opening and updating PRs, called but pr.

Much like but push, if there is only one branch, it will open a PR for that, otherwise it will ask you which branch to open one for. Or you can be explicit with something like but pr <branch>.

❯ but pr
Do you want to open a new PR on branch 'sc-switch-wording-to-x'? [Y/n]: y
→ Pushing sc-switch-wording-to-x...
  ✓ Pushed to origin
→ Creating PR for sc-switch-wording-to-x → main...

✓ Created PR #69
  Title: Switch Wording to X
  Branch: sc-switch-wording-to-x
  URL: https://github.com/schacon/why/pull/69

Once it's opened, you'll get a URL you can view the pull request on.

Forge Authentication

In order to open a PR on GitHub, you'll need to authenticate to that forge. You can see which authentications you have by running but config:

GitButler Configuration

User:
    Name: Scott Chacon (global)
   Email: schacon@gmail.com (global)
  Editor: nvim (global)

Target Branch:
    origin/main

Forge:
  • GitHub schacon

Available subcommands:
  but config user   - User settings (name, email, editor)
  but config forge  - Forge settings (GitHub, etc)
  but config target - Target branch settings

If you have not authenticated to a forge yet, you can run but config forge auth, which will ask you which type of authentication you would like to do:

❯ but config forge auth
? Select an authentication method:
> Device flow (OAuth)
  Personal Access Token (PAT)
  GitHub Enterprise

Selecting one of the options will allow you to provide an authentication token for GitButler to use for opening and modifying PRs.