Clone, edit and push files that live in a Gist#

GitHub Gists are full Git repositories, and can be cloned and pushed to.

You can clone them anonymously (read-only) just using their URL:

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git clone https://gist.github.com/simonw/0a30d52feeb3ff60f7d8636b0bde296b

But if you want to be able to make local edits and then push them back, you need to use this recipe instead:

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git clone git@gist.github.com:0a30d52feeb3ff60f7d8636b0bde296b.git

You can find this in the “Embed” menu, as the “Clone via SSH” option.

This only uses the Gist’s ID, the simonw/ part from the URL is omitted.

This uses your existing GitHub SSH credentials.

You can then edit files in that repository and commit and push them like this:

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cd 0a30d52feeb3ff60f7d8636b0bde296b
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# Edit files here
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git commit -m "Edited some files" -a
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git push