How do you fork your own repository on GitHub?
A super easy way to do it in 30 seconds from the GitHub website:
- Copy your repo's URL. Ex:
https://github.com/YourName/YourOldRepo
(hint: it's the URL when you look at your repo's main page on github. - Click the
+
icon in the top right corner. - Select "Import repository".
- Where it asks for the "Old URL", paste the URL you copied at step #1
- Enter the name of your new repo and click
Begin Import
. - That's it! You now have a copy of the full repo, with all commit history and branches!
Limitations: It's not actually a real fork. It's a copy of the repo. It won't allow to do pull requests back and forth.
Simplest way to achieve the desired effect is to create a new repository, then select the import option and supply the URL of the repo you wish to fork.
Images below will help:
Fork own repo via import-1
Fork own repo via import-2
- git clone https://github.com/YOURREPO.git TargetRepoName
- cd TargetRepoName/
- git remote set-url origin https://github.com/TargetRepoName.git
- git push -u origin master
I don't think you can fork your own repo.
Clone it and push it to a new repo is good but you need to:
git clone https://github.com/userName/Repo New_Repo
cd New_Repo
git remote set-url origin https://github.com/userName/New_Repo
git remote add upstream https://github.com/userName/Repo
git push origin master
git push --all
(see git push
)
See the all process described at "Fork your own project on GitHub".
Six years later (2016), you now have the GitHub importer which allows you to import a repo from another source... including GitHub.
See "Importing a repository with GitHub Importer"
narf's answer (upvoted) also illustrate that process.
That will allow you to create a new repository and import the full history of the old one into the new one, using its GitHub url.
Again: what you get is a copy, not a real fork: you cannot make pull request from the new repo to the old one.
Again (bis), as stated in the comments by mpersico
, this is not a TRUE FORK.
If I have a foo which is the canonical source repo for an open source project that I want other people to fork and have access to do PR, then I do not want to work in that repo, I want a fork I can use to issue proper PRs against my project.
I have solved this my creating a second account in GitHub and forking to that.