GitSnitch

gitsnitch is a simple tool that finds and prints a GitHub user's email address(es).

Give gitsnitch a GitHub username or profile URL, like gruns or https://github.com/gruns, and it finds and prints that user's email address(es) by examining the commits across that user's GitHub repos.

How GitSnitch Works

To use, provide gitsnitch with a GitHub username or profile URL and let it go to work. gitsnitch will, in turn:

1. Get a list of that user's repos via the GitHub API.
2. Iterate through each of those repos, prioritizing non-forked repos are forked repos.
3. For each repo, iterate through that repo's commits via the GitHub API and examine the committers' email addresses.
4. Collate a list of each repo's committers and, notably, their email addresses.
5. Output a nicely formatted summary of committers and their email addresses, sorted by number of commits.

Example:

$ gitsnitch https://github.com/gruns
https://github.com/gruns/autokey-to-espanso
Ansgar Grunseid  grunseid@gmail.com  2 commits, latest on Jan 07, 2023

https://github.com/gruns/furl
Ansgar Grunseid  grunseid@gmail.com   23 commits, latest on Jun 28, 2022
Ben Greiner      code@bnavigator.de    3 commits, latest on Mar 29, 2021
Tim Gates        tim.gates@iress.com   1 commits, latest on Jul 30, 2022

https://github.com/gruns/fallout-sonora-translation
Ansgar Grunseid  grunseid@gmail.com  7 commits, latest on Sep 22, 2023

...

That's it. Simple.

By default, this script does not need a GitHub API token because GitHub API endpoints, like https://api.github.com/users/gruns/repos, can be accessed without an API token at a low rate limit. However, if you encounter API rate limits, like

Exception: Error fetching repositories: {"message":"API rate limit exceeded for xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx. (But here's the good news: Authenticated requests get a higher rate limit. Check out the documentation for more details.)", "documentation_url": "https://docs.github.com/rest/..."}

you'll need to create an API token and add it your environment. To create an API token for gitsnitch:

1. Go to https://github.com/ and log in to your account.
2. Click on your profile picture (top-right corner) and go to 'Settings'.
3. Click 'Developer settings' in the left-hand sidebar.
4. Under 'Developer settings', click 'Personal access tokens'->'Tokens (classic)'.
5. Click 'Generate new token'. Then select at least 'read:user' and 'user:email' under 'user'.
6. Click 'Generate token'.
7. Copy the generated token. Be sure to save it; you won't be able to view it again.

Then add this token to your environment with

export GITHUB_TOKEN=<your_api_token>

Then re-run gitsnitch as normal. Boom.

Installation

Installing GitSnitch with pip is easy.

$ pip3 install gitsnitch