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All Contributors

Using the All Contributors CLI

All Contributors command line interface commands

Section titled “All Contributors command line interface commands”

You will mostly use four commands:

Command What it does
init Prepare a project to use the CLI
add Add a contributor or update their contribution types
check Find contributors who are not yet acknowledged
generate Regenerate the contributor tables and badge

all-contributors init

Section titled “all-contributors init”

You can run all-contributors init when you first start using the All Contributors CLI. This command asks you a few questions and then sets up the project to support All Contributors.

Terminal window
npx all-contributors init

The setup includes creating:

  • an .all-contributorsrc configuration file and
  • a contributor table in the files you specify.

The default file for the contributor table is your README.md.

all-contributors add

Section titled “all-contributors add”

Use the add command to add:

  • new contributors to your project, or
  • new ways in which they have contributed.

If you run add without a username, the CLI asks who to add and which contribution types to record.

Terminal window
npx all-contributors add
? What is the contributor's GitHub username? lwasser
? What are the contribution types? 💻  Code, 📖  Documentation

If you pass a username and one or more contribution types, the CLI adds that person without those prompts. For instance, someone may already be credited for code, and you later want to credit a documentation pull request too. The contributor is updated in your configuration file, and the contributors file is updated just as if you used the generate command.

Terminal window
# Add new contributor <username>, who made a contribution of type <contribution>
npx all-contributors add <username> <contribution>
# Example:
npx all-contributors add jfmengels code,doc

Where username is the user’s GitHub or Gitlab username, and contribution is a ,-separated list of contributions. See the Emoji Key (Contribution Types Reference) for a list of valid contribution types.

all-contributors check

Section titled “all-contributors check”

Use check to compare people who have commits on GitHub or GitLab with the ones credited in your .all-contributorsrc file.

The command prints two lists when it finds a mismatch: people who have commits but are missing from .all-contributorsrc, and people credited for code or tests who have no matching commits.

Missing contributors in .all-contributorsrc:
octocat


Unknown contributors found in .all-contributorsrc:
ghost
Terminal window
npx all-contributors check

all-contributors generate

Section titled “all-contributors generate”

Use generate to read the contributors list from your .all-contributorsrc file and update the contributor tables specified by the files key.

Terminal window
npx all-contributors generate

Please note the command must be able to find the following tags in those files, to update the table:

<!-- ALL-CONTRIBUTORS-LIST:START - Do not remove or modify this section -->
<!-- ALL-CONTRIBUTORS-LIST:END -->

Also, note that it needs to find the following tags to update the badge:

<!-- ALL-CONTRIBUTORS-BADGE:START - Do not remove or modify this section -->
<!-- ALL-CONTRIBUTORS-BADGE:END -->

GitHub Users

Section titled “GitHub Users”

In some cases you may see the error message GitHub API rate limit exceeded for xxx. You may need to set an environment variable named PRIVATE_TOKEN to circumvent this GitHub rate limit.

Private token is your Personal Access Token (PAT) to authenticate with the GitHub API.

GitLab Users

Section titled “GitLab Users”

Please note that if you are using a self-hosted GitLab instance, If you are using a private repository, a self-hosted GitLab instance, or encounter rate limits on GitLab.com, set an environment variable named PRIVATE_TOKEN.

Terminal window
# set private token on Linux
export PRIVATE_TOKEN=your_private_token
# set private token on Windows
set PRIVATE_TOKEN=your_private_token