This simple Ruby utility takes a file on your local machine and turns it into a gist on GitHub.

I could have used gems to simplify the development process, but I'm not sure how much code that would have actually saved me writing, and it would have undoubtedly added a layer of complexity in terms of understanding the codebase, so I decided to use only libraries which are built in to Ruby itself.

What I Learned

I learned a massive amount from making mistakes whilst building this little app. Gistdoit's code is overly complex and contains a lot of unnecessary indirection. This came from a strong desire to pracice OO design (for better or for worse) and a lack of understanding of the costs of prematurely creating abstractions. It also taught me a lot about the benefit of "make it work, make it right, make it fast", deliberate discovery and why DRY and abstractions should not be forced (I loved this Sandi Metz post on this topic), especially in the early stages of a project.

Getting started

gem install gistdoit

If it's the first time you're pushing a gist to GitHub with Gistdoit, then you will be asked to submit a personal access token, which you can get on your GitHub account here. All you have to do is click generate new token and make sure to select only the gist scope. Pass this token to Gistdoit one time and you're good to go.

This token is stored in ~/.gistdoit

Usage

To create a new gist, you simply type gistdoit along with the relative file path for the file you want to make a gist out of

// PWD is /Users/AwesomeUser/Dev/Projects

gistdoit cool_project_file.rb

Things I would like to add in the future

• Allowing the user to select whether they would like a gist to be either secret or public.
• Listing all gists which the option of limited to a certain number of most recent.
• Editing a particular gist after selecting it by name.
• Show the diff of what was changed when files are updated