Changing GitHub username

Ever wondered what are the consequences of changing your username on GitHub?

I did.

I created my GitHub account in 2009. At this time I really didn't care about using Git because i was using SVN. So I used some funky name (szopu, which lousy translates to "raccoon") and moved along.

Later, when I started using Git in my work I discovered that I already had that account, so I started using it.

At some point I wanted to change the username to something more recognizable, like my surname. But I was worried that because the username is a part of the repository url.

So what are the consequences when the username gets changed?

Fortunately, as I read on Github help page, after the username is changed, the old url of the repo will still work and redirect to the new repository. You will have time to update your urls to the new ones (for instance in readme and/or setup.py), until someone will create an account with your old username and a repository with the same name.

What about external GitHub Apps?

Some of the GitHub apps were able to refresh the username (and all underlying repositiories) automatically. Travis was able to change the profile url to new one. Also Codecov was able to change the urls.

Some of the Apps like Snyk, Sourcerer, Django-packages did not support username change, so I ended up by removing an account and creating it again.

So to sum up, changing the GitHub username is not so painful as it seems.