wgetpaste default to gists

1. wgetpaste is tool to conveniently paste your text and code snippet online around. However, it defaults to bpaste which relatively weak compared to gist. In this post, I will configure wgetpaste to use gist instead.

2. $ wgetpaste -h

   This command will show the basic command options.

3. $ wgetpaste -S

   This will list free service supported by wgetpaste.

    Services supported: (case sensitive):
       Name:        | Url:
       =============|=================
       *bpaste      | https://bpaste.net/
        ca          | http://pastebin.ca/
        codepad     | http://codepad.org/
        dpaste      | http://dpaste.com/
        lugons      | https://paste.lugons.org/
        poundpython | http://paste.pound-python.org/
        gists       | https://api.github.com/gists
   

   The default service is bpaste with a * ahead.

4. Now we need to change it to gists.

    # ect /etc/wgetpaste.d/gists.conf
    DEFAULT_SERVICE="gists"
   

   wgetpaste supports many other options, DEFAULT_{NICK,LANGUAGE,EXPIRATION}[_${SERVICE}] included.

   Run wgetpaste -S again to verify configuration.

5. $ wgetpaste ~/Documents/test-file

   Up to now, wgetpaste will paste text and code snippet as anonymous gist.github.com.

   anonymous gist cannot be searched later on.

6. wgetpaste to GitHub account.
   1. Go to GitHub settings and find Personal access tokens.
   2. Choose Generate new token and set the token description to wgetpaste.
   3. Change token right to gist only.
   4. Edit /etc/wgetpaste.d/gists.conf:

    # /etc/wgetpaste.d/gists.conf
    HEADER_gists="Authorization: token 1234abc56789..."
   

   Test again wgetpaste ~/Documents/test-file.

7. Now each wgetpaste execution will paste contents to GitHub acount, which enables search, edit, comment etc. later on.

   Actually since gist supports markdown, we can use gist as a pure text blog.

8. If once for a while, you don't want to expose your GitHub account on the Internet, you could add -g option to generate bpaste service. You can also use -g -s gists to generate anonymous gist. -g option tells wgetpaste to ignore configurations.