github-openwrt — Cross-compiled GitHub CLI for OpenWrt

Cross-compiles gh (GitHub CLI) as a statically-linked binary for OpenWrt routers running musl libc on aarch64.

Target

Property	Value
Router OS	OpenWrt SNAPSHOT (mediatek/filogic)
Architecture	aarch64_cortex-a53
libc	musl
Go target	GOOS=linux GOARCH=arm64 CGO_ENABLED=0

Prerequisites

• Go 1.26+ installed on the build host
• GitHub CLI source checkout at ../github/cli (relative to this project)
• sshpass for automated router deployment
• upx (optional) for binary compression

Build

make build

This cross-compiles gh and outputs the binary to bin/gh-openwrt-arm64.

Deploy

make deploy

This copies the binary to the router at /mnt/appdata/bin/gh, creates a symlink at /usr/bin/gh, and bootstraps authentication from the existing orchestrator config.

Manual Auth Setup

If you prefer manual auth on the router:

ssh root@10.0.0.1
echo "YOUR_GITHUB_PAT" | /mnt/appdata/bin/gh auth login --with-token
gh auth status

Automated Builds (CI)

A GitHub Actions workflow checks for new cli/cli releases every 6 hours. When a new version is detected:

1. Clones the upstream tag
2. Cross-compiles for linux/arm64 with CGO_ENABLED=0 (static, stripped)
3. Compresses with UPX
4. Publishes a GitHub Release with the binary and checksums

You can also trigger a build manually from the Actions tab with an optional force-rebuild flag.

Install from Release

# On the router
wget -O /mnt/appdata/bin/gh https://github.com/RPDevs-Vault/github-openwrt/releases/latest/download/gh-openwrt-arm64-uncompressed
chmod +x /mnt/appdata/bin/gh
ln -sf /mnt/appdata/bin/gh /usr/bin/gh

Integration with github-orchestrator

With gh available on the router, the orchestrator can optionally use gh api instead of raw curl calls for:

• Automatic token management (no need to pass -H "Authorization: token ...")
• Built-in pagination for large result sets
• Richer error handling and retry logic