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Forked from 0xjac/private_fork.md
Last active June 19, 2020 08:15
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Create a private fork of a public repository

The repository is public and Github does not allow the creation of private forks for public repositories.

The correct way of creating a private frok by duplicating the repo is documented here.

The commands are:

  1. Create a bare clone of the repository. (This is temporary and will be removed so just do it wherever.)

    git clone --bare https://github.com/usi-systems/easytrace.git
  2. Create a new private repository on Github and name it easytrace.

  3. Mirror-push your bare clone to your new easytrace repository.

    Replace <your_username> with your actual Github username in the url below.

    cd easytrace.git
    git push --mirror https://github.com/<your_username>/easytrace.git
  4. Remove the temporary local repository you created in step 1.

    cd ..
    rm -rf easytrace.git
  5. You can now clone your easytrace repository on your machine (in my case in the code folder).

    cd ~/code
    git clone https://github.com/<your_username>/easytrace.git
  6. If you want, add the original repo as remote to fetch (potential) future changes. Make sure you also disable push on the remote (as you are not allowed to push to it anyway).

    git remote add upstream [email protected]:usi-systems/easytrace.git
    git remote set-url --push upstream DISABLE

    You can list all your remotes with git remote -v. You should see:

    origin	https://github.com/<your_username>/easytrace.git (fetch)
    origin	https://github.com/<your_username>/easytrace.git (push)
    upstream	https://github.com/usi-systems/easytrace.git (fetch)
    upstream	DISABLE (push)
    

    When you push, do so on origin with git push origin.

    When you want to pull changes from upstream you can just fetch the remote and rebase on top of your work.

      git fetch upstream
      git rebase upstream/master

    And solve the conflicts if any

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