TL;DR

Use y to get a durable link to a file in GitHub.

When I write a blog post about some software of mine, I often include links towards a file inside the relevant repository in GitHub with an explanation of what I did, how, etc.

Fact is that this explanation might be doomed to not age exactly well. What if I later change my mind and implementation? Will the blog post become stale?

This is even worse when I put a link to a specific line. What if I add more stuff before that line, making it shift down? This will generate a lot of confusion!

The obvious solution is to put a link to the representation of that file in that moment, which in Git terms means referring to a branch that does not move (so why a branch?), or a tag (better), or as a specific SHA1 hash.

It turns out that GitHub gets you covered with a little keyboards shortcut: y. When you are on the page for a specific file in a repository, pressing y will automatically change the URL in the browser’s address bar to represent the file in that exact point in time you are looking at, in SHA1 terms.

At this point, you can push whatever change you want… that URL will always stay the same and show the file as initially intended. Nifty!

To read more:

• Getting permanent links to files
• Keyboard shortcuts

Stay safe!