The Graphite CLI is a tool to help you break up large engineering tasks into a series of small, incremental code changes directly from the command line. The Graphite CLI makes it easy to stay unblocked as an author, develop faster, and provide more helpful comments as a reviewer.

The Graphite CLI is fully compatible with git—just install it on an existing repository and begin using our suite of gt commands.

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Install the CLI

Install the Graphite CLI using either Homebrew or npm:

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brew installation

We recommend installing via Homebrew for smoothest sailing, even on Linux!

Terminal
brew install withgraphite/tap/graphite
gt --version

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npm installation

Terminal
npm install -g @withgraphite/graphite-cli@stable
gt --version

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node.js versioning (for npm installation only)

We develop Graphite with Node.js v18, but Graphite should run with no major issues on any current version of Node. If you run into any issues that seem Node-related, try using v18 as a first workaround! If that doesn’t work, we recommend the brew installation, which ships standalone binaries for both MacOS and Linux.

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git versioning

As of v1.0.0, Graphite requires a minimum git --version of 2.38.0.

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Ubuntu

Ubuntu LTS currently provides a relatively old version of Git by default. You can source the latest version from the `git-core` PPA repository.

Terminal
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:git-core/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install git

Read more on the Git website

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MacOS

Upgrading to the latest version of XCode tooling, provides a recent version of git that’s suitable for Graphite. You can also use Homebrew to install the latest version of Git.

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Unsafe: overriding

If you believe this is an error, and your git version is higher than 2.38.0 but something about it’s packaging is making Graphite incorrectly infer it’s not the right version, you can unsafely suppress this message via GRAPHITE_IGNORE_GIT_VERSION=1. This is discouraged, so be careful; most Graphite commands will not work on older versions.

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Windows

Currently, the best way to install Graphite on Windows is via npm. If you do not use Node in your day-to-day work, there are a variety of ways to get it set up on your system, listed in the NPM documentation.

Click here for instructions.

Alternatively, you can use either brew or npm on WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux).

We are always working towards better native Windows support, although occasionally it falls behind *nix systems in priority. If you run into any issues, especially if they are blocking your workflow, please reach out in our community Slack.

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Authenticate the CLI

To use Graphite to create or update pull requests in GitHub for the branches in your stack using gt submit, you must authenticate the CLI with your GitHub account. See Privacy and Security to understand which GitHub permissions Graphite requires.

  1. Sign into https://app.graphite.dev/activate with your GitHub account.

  2. Copy the gt auth --token <your_cli_auth_token> command shown (your CLI auth token will be pre-filled for you).

  3. Paste and run it in your terminal.

Terminal
> gt auth --token <YOUR_AUTH_TOKEN>
🔐 Saved auth token to "/Users/pranathiperi/.graphite_user_config"

Once you’ve authenticated the CLI, you can run gt submit to create or update pull requests in GitHub for every branch in your stack.

Your privacy and security are our top priorities. Graphite is architected to ask for the minimum set of permissions necessary within the constraints of GitHub’s API. Learn more about our GitHub integration.