As I understand it, having a GitHub profile as a portfolio has become
an essential element in applying for entry-level computer programming
jobs insightfully, a friend of mine draws a comparison with the rise
of unpaid internships in other fields. Something about GitHub that
gets in the way of maintaining a presentable portfolio is that forks
of other people s repositories made just to submit a pull request can
crowd out repositories showcasing one s work. Sometimes pull requests
can take months to be responded to by upstream maintainers, leaving
unimpressive repositories sitting around on one s profile for all that
time.
The following Python script,
clean-github-pr.py, forks a repository
and then sets various attributes of it to make it as obvious as GitHub
allows that it s just a temporary fork made in order to submit a pull
request. Invoke it like this:
$ clean-github-pr.py upstream-owner/repo-to-fork
You will need the
PyGitHub python library, which on a Debian Stretch
system can be installed with
apt-get install python-github.
#!/usr/bin/python
# clean-github-pr --- Create tidy repositories for pull requests
#
# Copyright (C) 2016 Sean Whitton
#
# clean-github-pr is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# clean-github-pr is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with clean-github-pr. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
import github
import sys
import time
import tempfile
import shutil
import subprocess
import os
CREDS_FILE = os.getenv("HOME") + "/.cache/clean-github-pr-creds"
def main():
# check arguments
if len(sys.argv) != 2:
print sys.argv[0] + ": usage: " + sys.argv[0] + " USER/REPO"
sys.exit(1)
# check creds file
try:
f = open(CREDS_FILE, 'r')
except IOError:
print sys.argv[0] + ": please put your github username and password, separated by a colon, in the file ~/.cache/clean-github-pr-creds"
sys.exit(1)
# just to be sure
os.chmod(CREDS_FILE, 0600)
# make the fork
creds = f.readline()
username = creds.split(":")[0]
pword = creds.split(":")[1].strip()
g = github.Github(username, pword)
u = g.get_user()
source = sys.argv[1]
fork = sys.argv[1].split("/")[1]
print "forking repo " + source
u.create_fork(g.get_repo(source))
while True:
try:
r = u.get_repo(fork)
except github.UnknownObjectException:
print "still waiting"
time.sleep(5)
else:
break
# set up & push github branch
user_work_dir = os.getcwd()
work_area = tempfile.mkdtemp()
os.chdir(work_area)
subprocess.call(["git", "clone", "https://github.com/" + username + "/" + fork])
os.chdir(work_area + "/" + fork)
subprocess.call(["git", "checkout", "--orphan", "github"])
subprocess.call(["git", "rm", "-rf", "."])
with open("README.md", 'w') as f:
f.write("This repository is just a fork made in order to submit a pull request; please ignore.")
subprocess.call(["git", "add", "README.md"])
subprocess.call(["git", "commit", "-m", "fork for a pull request; please ignore"])
subprocess.call(["git", "push", "origin", "github"])
os.chdir(user_work_dir)
shutil.rmtree(work_area)
# set clean repository settings
r.edit(fork,
has_wiki=False,
description="Fork for a pull request; please ignore",
homepage="",
has_issues=False,
has_downloads=False,
default_branch="github")
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()
If you have any suggestions for
clean-github-pr.py, please send me a
patch or a pull request against the version in
my dotfiles repository.
What happened in the 
