How to clone all repos at once from GitHub?

Organisation repositories

To clone all repos from your organisation, try the following shell one-liner:

GHORG=company; curl "https://api.github.com/orgs/$GHORG/repos?per_page=1000" | grep -o 'git@[^"]*' | xargs -L1 git clone

User repositories

Cloning all using Git repository URLs:

GHUSER=CHANGEME; curl "https://api.github.com/users/$GHUSER/repos?per_page=1000" | grep -o 'git@[^"]*' | xargs -L1 git clone

Cloning all using Clone URL:

GHUSER=CHANGEME; curl "https://api.github.com/users/$GHUSER/repos?per_page=1000" | grep -w clone_url | grep -o '[^"]\+://.\+.git' | xargs -L1 git clone

Here is the useful shell function which can be added to user's startup files (using curl + jq):

# Usage: gh-clone-user (user)
gh-clone-user() {
  curl -sL "https://api.github.com/users/$1/repos?per_page=1000" | jq -r '.[]|.clone_url' | xargs -L1 git clone
}

Private repositories

If you need to clone the private repos, you can add Authorization token either in your header like:

-H 'Authorization: token <token>'

or pass it in the param (?access_token=TOKEN), for example:

curl -s "https://api.github.com/users/$GHUSER/repos?access_token=$GITHUB_API_TOKEN&per_page=1000" | grep -w clone_url | grep -o '[^"]\+://.\+.git' | xargs -L1 git clone

Notes:

  • To fetch only private repositories, add type=private into your query string.
  • Another way is to use hub after configuring your API key.

See also:

  • GitHub REST API v3 - List your repositories
  • How to download GitHub Release from private repo using command line.
  • How to retrieve the list of all github repositories of a person?.

Hints:
- To increase speed, set number of parallel processes by specifying -P parameter for xargs (-P4 = 4 processes).
- If you need to raise the GitHub limits, try authenticating by specifying your API key.
- Add --recursive to recurse into the registered submodules, and update any nested submodules within.


Simple script using GitHub CLI (no API keys)

Here's a simple solution using the official GitHub CLI tool, gh - no need for API keys and can handle any number of private repos.

First time only: login with gh for private repos, and follow prompts:

gh auth login

This will clone any number of repos under a new ./myorgname folder. Replace myorgname with your org name:

gh repo list myorgname --limit 1000 | while read -r repo _; do
  gh repo clone "$repo" "$repo"
done

Setup

To get the GitHub CLI tool:

  • Mac - brew install gh
  • Linux or Windows - see GitHub install guide

The GitHub CLI tool will be supported long-term as and when the GitHub API changes.

Optional: update existing checkouts

To update repo folders already on disk, as well as cloning new repos, the script needs to check for failure of the gh repo clone, like this:

gh repo list myorgname --limit 1000 | while read -r repo _; do
  gh repo clone "$repo" "$repo" -- -q 2>/dev/null || (
    cd "$repo"
    # Handle case where local checkout is on a non-main/master branch
    # - ignore checkout errors because some repos may have zero commits, 
    # so no main or master
    git checkout -q main 2>/dev/null || true
    git checkout -q master 2>/dev/null || true
    git pull -q
  )
done

Tips

  • Don't want to create repos in the ./myorgname folder? Drop the second "$repo" argument to gh repo clone to create them in current directory
  • More than 1000 repos? Increase the --limit parameter

Useful options:

  • --no-archived - omit archived repositories
  • --source - show only non-forks

Background

  • GitHub CLI login doc
  • Script commands above were derived from an issue comment and gist by davegallant

I don't think it's possible to do it that way. Your best bet is to find and loop through a list of an Organization's repositories using the API.

Try this:

  • Create an API token by going to Account Settings -> Applications
  • Make a call to: http://${GITHUB_BASE_URL}/api/v3/orgs/${ORG_NAME}/repos?access_token=${ACCESS_TOKEN}
  • The response will be a JSON array of objects. Each object will include information about one of the repositories under that Organization. I think in your case, you'll be looking specifically for the ssh_url property.
  • Then git clone each of those ssh_urls.

It's a little bit of extra work, but it's necessary for GitHub to have proper authentication.


On Windows and all UNIX/LINUX systems, using Git Bash or any other Terminal, replace YOURUSERNAME by your username and use:

CNTX={users|orgs}; NAME={username|orgname}; PAGE=1
curl "https://api.github.com/$CNTX/$NAME/repos?page=$PAGE&per_page=100" |
  grep -e 'clone_url*' |
  cut -d \" -f 4 |
  xargs -L1 git clone
  • Set CNTX=users and NAME=yourusername, to download all your repositories.
  • Set CNTX=orgs and NAME=yourorgname, to download all repositories of your organization.

The maximum page-size is 100, so you have to call this several times with the right page number to get all your repositories (set PAGE to the desired page number you want to download).

Here is a shell script that does the above: https://gist.github.com/erdincay/4f1d2e092c50e78ae1ffa39d13fa404e

Tags:

Git

Git Clone

Github

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