Use gh cli and fzf to add a remote for a fork of the current repo

add_fork_remote.sh

#!/bin/sh

# Scenario:
# - you have a local checkout of a github repo
# - you're looking at public forks of that repo
# - you want to add a remote to your local checkout for one of the forks

set -e
set PIPEFAIL

# Use a fifo for a POSIX compatible array read.
FP=$(mktemp -d)/fifo
mkfifo "${FP}"

# Fetch all forks of the repo in the current directory.
# Sort by last pushed date.
# For each fork, print .pushed_at, owner.login, and .clone_url
# Use fzf to select a fork, and:
#   - don't include column 3 in the preview
#   - sort in reverse order (most recently pushed at the bottom)
# Redirect selection to the fifo; background so we don't block.
gh api --paginate "repos/{owner}/{repo}/forks" \
    | jq -s '.[] | sort_by(.pushed_at)' \
    | jq -r '.[] | "\(.pushed_at) \(.owner.login) \(.clone_url)"' \
    | fzf --with-nth=1,2 --tac > "${FP}" &
# Read the fifo and let word splitting do its thing. We only need the last two words.
read -r _ FORK_OWNER FORK_CLONE_URL < "${FP}"
git remote add "${FORK_OWNER}" "${FORK_CLONE_URL}"
echo "Added remote ${FORK_OWNER}"

Demo: https://asciinema.org/a/3CWJwIlKgAeCAmUJdafFyygPb

For line 9, I think you mean

set -o pipefail

Btw, my preamble is always:

set -euo pipefail
shopt -s failglob
# shellcheck disable=SC2317
function trap_err { echo "ERR signal on line $(caller)" >&2; }
trap trap_err ERR
trap exit INT  # So that ^C will stop the entire script, not just the current subprocess
export PS4='+(${BASH_SOURCE}:${LINENO}): ${FUNCNAME[0]:+${FUNCNAME[0]}(): }'

This is a great script. I took your ideas further and added some features:

https://github.com/huyz/trustytools/blob/master/unixy/gh-remote-add-fork.sh

• Support multi-select of forks
• Let the results stream in as batches (no guaranteed final sorting if more batches come in, but easy to filter by year: '2024). (Btw, I don't think that a fifo helps for this)
• Support searching the upstream's forks instead of the current repo's forks.
• Support importing all the fork's tags
• Auto-detect origin if gh can't detect what the default repo is.