How to get your own git.io short URL?

TL;DR GIF Just run this for any URL within GitHub and perceive instant euphoria: curl https://git.io/ --include -F url="https://github.com/<path>" -F code="<name>" .

Back to 2011, as a part of some experiment, GitHub introduced a URL shortening service called git.io, but apparently they haven’t used it ever since. However, one might find it interesting, since it lets you get some sick shortened links for your GitHub repositories or Gists. You could put one on the talk slide or something. This is relatively unknown, so I thought I might share it.

https://git.io/wu-tang definitely looks cooler than https://github.com/user/reponame.

$ curl https://git.io/ --include -F url= "https://github.com/user/reponame" -F code= "wu-tang" HTTP/1.1 201 Created Location: http://git.io/mapping

If this returns 201 Created instead, someone has already created a link for the page. The service won’t allow multiple links for the page, so the only viable option is to contact GitHub support.

I made one for my CLI library in Go: http://git.io/climax.