A-Novel developer guide

Appearance

GitHub ​

GitHub hosts the code, reviews and CI. Install its terminal client, gh; the a-novel CLI uses it too.

You need a GitHub account.

Install ​

Skip to Configure if this already prints a version:

bash
gh --version

The distribution's gh is outdated; use GitHub's repository:

bash
sudo mkdir -p -m 755 /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://cli.github.com/packages/githubcli-archive-keyring.gpg | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/githubcli-archive-keyring.gpg > /dev/null
sudo chmod go+r /etc/apt/keyrings/githubcli-archive-keyring.gpg
echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/githubcli-archive-keyring.gpg] https://cli.github.com/packages stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/github-cli.list > /dev/null
sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y gh

Configure ​

Sign in ​

Skip if gh auth status shows you logged in.

bash
gh auth login --hostname github.com --git-protocol ssh --web --skip-ssh-key

Approve the one-time code in your browser.

Create an SSH key ​

Git reaches GitHub over SSH, with a key registered on your account.

Skip if ls ~/.ssh lists a .pub file already, and put its path in place of ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub below.

bash
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "$(git config user.email)" -f ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

Register the key on GitHub ​

Skip if this greets you by name. The exit status 1 that follows is normal.

bash
ssh -T git@github.com

Otherwise, register the key for authentication. gh asks for a temporary permission to upload it.

bash
gh auth refresh -h github.com -s admin:public_key
gh ssh-key add ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub --type authentication --title "$(hostname)"
gh auth refresh -h github.com --remove-scopes admin:public_key

Run the check again: GitHub now greets you by name.

Sysadmins

Sysadmins use a stricter setup: see GitHub with a security key.

Share one connection ​

The CLI already reuses one GitHub connection across its multi-repository commands. Let every Git command reuse it too, so pushes and pulls skip the handshake.

Skip if ssh -G git@github.com | grep '^controlpath' prints a path. Otherwise, on Linux or macOS:

bash
mkdir -p ~/.ssh && chmod 700 ~/.ssh
cat >> ~/.ssh/config <<'EOF'

Host github.com
    ControlMaster auto
    ControlPath ~/.ssh/cm-%C
    ControlPersist 1h
EOF

The connection closes after an idle hour, or at once with ssh -O exit git@github.com. Windows OpenSSH cannot share connections.

Accept your invitations ​

Once you are enrolled, GitHub emails an invitation per organization. Accept both, from the email or the invitation pages (a-novel, a-novel-kit).