Gists & Wikis

Gists

GitHub Gists are small snippets or files hosted on gist.github.com. Each gist has its own git repository.

Backup Owned Gists

github-backup octocat --token $GITHUB_TOKEN --output /backup --gists

Clones all gists owned by octocat as bare mirror repositories:

git/gists/<gist-id>.git/
json/gists/<gist-id>.json

The JSON file contains the gist object exactly as GitHub returns it:

  • Gist ID, description, visibility (public/secret)
  • List of files (filename, language, size)
  • Owner, created/updated timestamps
  • Comment count
  • Git URLs (HTTPS and SSH)

json/gists/index.json lists all owned gists.

Secret gists. GitHub's public gist listing for a user never contains secret gists. When the token belongs to the account being backed up (the login is compared case-insensitively), GET /gists is used and secret gists are included. For any other user, without a token, or with a token that cannot call GET /user (GitHub App tokens), only public gists are backed up.

Backup Starred Gists

github-backup octocat --token $GITHUB_TOKEN --output /backup --starred-gists

Records the gists starred by the authenticated user (not necessarily octocat). This requires the gist OAuth scope.

Only the gist metadata is saved (json/gists/<gist-id>.starred.json and json/gists/starred_index.json); starred gists are not cloned, so their file contents are not part of the backup.

Combined

github-backup octocat --token $GITHUB_TOKEN --output /backup \
  --gists --starred-gists

Gist update behaviour

On subsequent runs, gists are updated in place with git fetch --all (with --prune added if --prune is set), exactly like mirror clones of repositories. Gists are always mirror clones; --clone-type does not apply to them. A gist that cannot be cloned or updated is recorded as a failure of the run (gist <id>) while the other gists continue.

Wikis

GitHub repository wikis are stored as separate git repositories (the <repo>.wiki.git URL).

Backup Wikis

github-backup octocat --token $GITHUB_TOKEN --output /backup \
  --repositories --wikis

--wikis runs independently of --repositories — you do not need to enable --repositories to back up wikis, but both flags are commonly used together.

Output

git/wikis/<repo>.wiki.git/

Each wiki is cloned as a bare mirror. The repository contains all wiki pages as Markdown files, plus the full commit history.

Notes

  • Repositories that have no wiki will be skipped silently.
  • A wiki must be initialised (have at least one page) before it can be cloned.
  • Private repository wikis require a token with the repo scope.