Clone
Cloning, on the other hand, involves creating a local copy of a repository from GitHub onto your local machine. It allows you to work on the code locally, make changes, and interact with the repository without an active internet connection. Cloning is a crucial step in the development process, enabling developers to work on projects locally and synchronize changes with the remote repository on GitHub.
Key aspects of cloning:
- Local Copy: When you clone a repository, you download a full copy of the repository onto your local machine. This copy includes all files, commit history, branches, and other repository data.
- Version Control: Cloning enables version control on your local machine. You can make changes to the code, create new branches, commit changes, and manage the entire development workflow locally.
- Synchronization: After making changes locally, you can push these changes back to the remote repository on GitHub. This synchronization ensures that your local changes are reflected in the shared repository, allowing collaboration with other team members.
How to clone a repository?
- Open any repository on Github
- Click on the code button to get the repository’s HTTPS or SSH URL.
- We are ready to perform the clone using the git clone command in the command-line interface as depicted in below visual aid.
Now let us discuss the conclusive differences between Fork and Clone operation over a repository, been depicted below in a tabular format provided below as follows:
| Fork | Clone |
|---|---|
| Forking is done on the GitHub Account | Cloning is done using Git |
| Forking a repository creates a copy of the original repository on our GitHub account | Cloning a repository creates a copy of the original repository on our local machine |
| Changes made to the forked repository can be merged with the original repository via a pull request | Changes made to the cloned repository cannot be merged with the original repository unless you are the collaborator or the owner of the repository |
| Forking is a concept | Cloning is a process |
| Forking is just containing a separate copy of the repository and there is no command involved | Cloning is done through the command ‘git clone‘ and it is a process of receiving all the code files to the local machine |
Difference Between fork and clone in GitHub
In GitHub when we want to work on someone else’s project we usually do either cloning or forking. In this article, we will learn what is the difference between fork and clone in Github.