Create gists from a real github repo

[kwalrath]

Instead of editing personal gists, it'd be much easier if we could create those gists automagically from a github repo. You should be able to create multiple gists from a single repo.

For example, we have a bunch of examples in https://github.com/dart-lang/dart-tutorials-samples. Shams has updated them and converted them to gists, for use in embedded dartpads. Shams was about to remove the dart-tutorials-samples copies of the gist-converted samples, but then we realized:

• We'd like to be able to see diffs between versions.
• We'd like to be able to download all the samples at once, in a form that's usable in, say, WebStorm.
• We'd like to be able to easily search all the tutorial samples for certain things (e.g. places that could use null-aware operators) without relying on the extra copy that we put (by hand) in doc comments. For an example, search for https://gist.github.com/Sfshaza/192bf3be4a7308db4664 in /docs/tutorials/add-elements/index.markdown. We put this in there because it's hard to write about something you can't see, and to give us a little bit of searchability. If we have 3 separate copies of the code (gist, github project, and markdown), it's going to be hard to maintain.

Having a real github repo for the samples would make the code much more maintainable for us, and give us a real change history.

Could we get a tool that'd automatically create gists from a github repo? It's OK for the gist ID to change between versions, I think. (Though it'd be good not to change the gist ID if the generated code hasn't changed.)

/cc @Sfshaza @Georgehe4

[Sfshaza]

YES YES YES!

First, having the gists in a location that is tied to my ID is all kinds of wrong.

Second, for maintenance reasons, it's highly problematic to have the source in 3 separate locations.

Please consider adding this ability!!!

[kasperpeulen]

I have been writing an executable that does something very close to that. So that it is easier to write dartpads/gist from the command line.

I will try to rewrite it so that you could do exactly that. I wanted to use something like that for myself as well.

I would suggest that after the first time the gist is created, the gist url will be added to the homepage field of the pubspec. So that the second time the gist can just be updated with that id (instead of creating a new id). The only problem would be then, that on which name would you put the gist? And how can you make sure the other person can also edit those gists.

A solution for that could that you get a token here: https://github.com/settings/tokens

which write access to gist. So if you then put all the gist on one of your two names, you could give the other person that token, and with that token, the other person has access to edit your gist (if you trust the other person enough ;)).

So then if you then tell the executable to update all gists from the github repo source, then you would need to specify that token, and then you would have access to update all gists.

[kasperpeulen]

I began working on this here:
https://github.com/kasperpeulen/gist-generator

@kwalrath @Sfshaza

[kwalrath]

👍 @kasperpeulen!

[chalin]

Related #788.

[RedBrogdon]

Closing this in favor of #1096. Rather than processing a repo into individual gists, we cant just update DartPad to load from a repo directly.