When I think of GitHub I imagine a vast network of people and code; a superorganism that changed how we make software. When I was getting into programming, starting a new project was daunting -- you had to imagine and build everything nearly from scratch. My version of code-sharing was calling my older cousin who was going to college for CS and getting code dictated to me over the phone. When the Internet arrived in my home town, it made hacking on new projects so much more fun. Starting a new project, at least initially, became about discovery:

I would walk to the Internet cafe and Yahoo search “vb code online”

There were a number of pseudo-GitHub sites that hosted Visual Basic projects

I’d download projects related to what I wanted to build, burn them on a CD and head back home

I’d run these projects, change & tinker with them, and get inspired on how to build my own

This mirrors the experience of many developers today, except, thanks to GitHub, they have many more options and a lot smoother UX. However, one thing that has remained the same: You still have to download projects you discover on GitHub and figure out how to run them just to start tinkering. While easier than walking to the Internet cafe, it’s enough friction that many people will give up.

That’s why today we’re making it easier to run repos on Repl.it. Now you can instantly run code from a GitHub repository without the hassle of configuring a local development environment. Simply click the import button on Repl.it or click a run on repl.it badge, which will be coming to README files near you.

Here’s how it works

After cloning a GitHub repo into a repl we detect the run command, and if we’re unable to do so we help the user configure a .replit file that includes the run command information. We then help the user create a Pull Request back to GitHub so that other users won’t have to search for the run command in the future.