Using a GitHub Gist like a git repo

A GitHub gist is backed by a regular git repository, but it's not exposed explicitly via the user interface.

For example, this "secret" gist can be cloned using this command:

git clone https://gist.github.com/fmarier/b652bad2e759675e8650f3d3ee81ab08.git test

Within this test directory, the normal git commands can be used:

touch empty
git add empty
git commit -a -m "Nothing to see here"

A gist can contain multiple files just like normal repositories.

In order to push to this repo, add the following pushurl:

git remote set-url --push origin git@gist.github.com:b652bad2e759675e8650f3d3ee81ab08.git

before pushing using the regular command:

git push

Note that the GitHub history UI will not show you the normal commit details such as commit message and signatures.

If you want to access the latest version of a file contained within this gist, simply access https://gist.githubusercontent.com/fmarier/b652bad2e759675e8650f3d3ee81ab08/raw/readme.md.