Show HN: Browse GitHub repos in Emacs without cloning

1 day ago (github.com)

Wouldn't be nice to press <C-x C-f> (find-file) and instead of a file path, give it a GitHub URL, and then just browse the repo in Dired?

11 comments

iLemming

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Pay08  1 day ago

Really neat. Out of curiosity, does this need to use the Github API? I hoped something like this could be done with plain http.

  • v9v  1 day ago

    I use https://github.com/TxGVNN/github-explorer for this and even though it doesn't have a C-x C-f nicety (you just m-x github-explorer then type in the repo name) it works via http (or at least I don't recall giving it any API key or anything).

    • iLemming  10 hours ago

      From what I can tell (by just glancing over the code) - it doesn't open the tree in Dired. I just wanted to browse any GitHub repo in Dired. You can browse the tree in any branch, view and copy files out, grab GH urls for files, for regions, etc. You just can't make any edits - no file/subdir renaming.

  • iLemming  1 day ago

    Of course it needs to use the API. How are you otherwise read the private repos?

    • necovek  1 day ago

      Authenticated HTTP or even SSH should allow it, especially if you are restricting to GH and know how their web URLs translate into git repo URLs.

      1 reply →

captn3m0  17 hours ago

What I want at this point is a classic.github.com which uses the old UI from 2013. That was perfect and fast.

  • iLemming  12 hours ago

    The bigger point is not about "a better UI", it's about having control over plain text. My issue with things like Jira/GitHub/Slack is not that they don't provide nice UI/UX but that they do that each on their own terms - I can't easily edit a Jira comment without having to deal with their shittiest wysiwyg bullcrap; I can't quickly and easily extract a code snippet from a Slack message without wanting to smash my keyboard in anger. If I can see that crap on my screen and can read it, why the heck they make it so vexatiously difficult to extract it and deal with it in something else? Why do I have to go through enormous hoops, every fucking time?

    Using Emacs liberated me from wasting my energy for crap like that. Why would I ever complain about GitHub changing/not having/breaking their UI, if I just want to browse files and the well-trodden path for doing just that has existed in my tool belt for years, why wouldn't I just use that?

  • the_biot  12 hours ago

    But github now handles so much more traffic, without a doubt. I'm not so sure their infrastructure is keeping up, but if it is, the current sluggishness may just be its speed under any load.

    If you want to see what it should be, check any forgejo/codeberg repo.