Installation

Table of Contents

• Prerequisites
• Installation Methods
  • Download Binary
  • Install Using Go
  • Build from Source
• Verify the Installation
• Authentication
• GitHub Permissions

Prerequisites

• GitHub.com repository: GitHub Enterprise Server is not supported in v1
• GitHub authentication: an authenticated GitHub CLI session, GH_TOKEN, or GITHUB_TOKEN
• Latest version of Go: required only for go install or building from source

The installed binary calls GitHub directly. The gh executable is an optional credential source and is not needed for normal API operations.

Installation Methods

Download Binary

Download a pre-built binary from GitHub Releases.

Choose the binary for your platform, make it executable where necessary, and place it on your PATH.

Install Using Go

go install github.com/UnitVectorY-Labs/ghrepocfg@latest

Ensure the Go binary directory is on your PATH.

Build from Source

git clone https://github.com/UnitVectorY-Labs/ghrepocfg.git
cd ghrepocfg
go build -o ghrepocfg

Verify the Installation

ghrepocfg version

Version output includes the application version, Go version, operating system, and architecture.

Authentication

Credentials are resolved in this order:

1. gh auth token --hostname github.com, when the GitHub CLI is installed and authenticated
2. GH_TOKEN
3. GITHUB_TOKEN

Authenticate the GitHub CLI with:

gh auth login

Or provide a token to the process environment. Tokens are sent only to https://api.github.com, are never written to YAML, and are not included in API errors.

A usable GitHub CLI credential takes precedence over token environment variables. Run without gh on PATH when an automation environment must use GH_TOKEN or GITHUB_TOKEN instead.

GitHub Permissions

Use the least privilege that covers every configured section.

Feature	Read or dry-run	Apply
Repository settings and topics	Metadata read	Administration write
Security settings	Repository admin visibility	Administration or applicable security-feature write access
Actions policy	Actions policy read access	Administration or Actions policy write access
Direct collaborators and invitations	Repository administration read	Administration write
Team access	Repository administration and organization Members read	Administration write and Members read
Repository rulesets	Repository administration read	Administration write

Full export and authoritative security, collaborator, team, or ruleset management require repository admin access. This prevents GitHub permission filtering from being mistaken for an empty desired collection.

Classic personal access tokens generally need repo for private repositories and organization scopes for team visibility. Fine-grained token permission names and feature licensing are enforced by GitHub.