Raphael Stolt has an interesting idea about PHPUnit plugin (GitHub_TicketListener) that allows you to close (or reopen) Github issues via PHPUnit tests.

Since PHPUnit 3.4.0 a new extension point for interacting with issue tracking systems [...]. The extension point has been introduced by an abstract PHPUnit_Extensions_TicketListener class, which allows developer to add tailor-made ticket listeners supporting their favoured TTS.

The "@ticket" notation that PHPUnit allows as an annotation is the key to linking together your unit tests with the new listener. Two methods, getTicketInfo and updateTicket, are used to have the listener make a cURL connection over to Github and send the request to a REST-like service on the remote side.