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title Cloning and Forking
sidebar_label 9. Cloning & Forking
sidebar_position 9
description Learn how to download existing projects and create your own copies of open-source repositories to start contributing. This is the essential first step in your journey to becoming a proficient GitHub user and open-source contributor.
tags
git
github
cloning
forking
open-source
contributing
keywords
git
github
cloning
forking
open-source
contributing

One of the best ways to learn at CodeHarborHub is to look at how others build software. GitHub makes it incredibly easy to take an existing project and bring it onto your own computer. To do this, we use two main concepts: Forking and Cloning.

Forking vs. Cloning: The Big Difference

These two terms are often confused, but they serve very different purposes in the professional developer's workflow.

Action Where it happens What it does Use Case
Forking On GitHub (Cloud) Creates a copy of someone's repo under your account. To contribute to Open Source or experiment with a project.
Cloning On your PC (Local) Downloads a repo from GitHub to your hard drive. To start coding on a project locally.

1. How to Fork a Repository

Forking is the first step to contributing to an open-source project like CodeHarborHub.

  1. Navigate to the repository you want to copy (e.g., github.com/codeharborhub/mern-stack-app).
  2. In the top-right corner, click the Fork button.
  3. GitHub will create a carbon copy of that project in your own profile (e.g., github.com/your-username/mern-stack-app).

:::info Why Fork? You cannot "Push" code directly to a project you don't own. Forking gives you your own version where you have "Admin" rights to make any changes you want. :::

2. How to Clone a Repository

Once you have a repository on GitHub (either your own or a fork), you need to "Clone" it to your computer to actually edit the files.

  1. On the GitHub repo page, click the green <> Code button.
  2. Copy the HTTPS URL.
  3. Open your terminal and run:
git clone https://github.com/your-username/your-repo-name.git

What happens during a Clone?

  • Git creates a new folder on your computer.
  • It downloads every file and every folder.
  • Crucially: It downloads the entire history (all previous commits).
  • It automatically sets up the "Remote" (origin) so you can push/pull immediately.

The Open Source Contribution Flow

This is the standard "Industrial Level" workflow for contributing to projects:

graph TD
    A[Original Repo] -->|Fork| B[Your GitHub Fork]
    B -->|Clone| C[Your Local PC]
    C -->|Commit & Push| B
    B -->|Pull Request| A
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Step 3: Keeping your Clone Updated

If the original project (the one you forked) gets updated with new features, your local clone will become outdated. At CodeHarborHub, we use the upstream command to keep things synced.

# 1. Connect to the original 'Source' repo
git remote add upstream https://github.com/codeharborhub/original-project.git

# 2. Pull the latest changes from the original source
git pull upstream main

Common Scenarios

Problem Solution
"I just want to play with the code locally." Just Clone the repo.
"I want to fix a bug in CodeHarborHub." Fork it first, then Clone your fork.
"I deleted my local folder by mistake!" No problem! Just Clone it again from GitHub.

:::tip You can clone a repository directly into VS Code! Open VS Code, press Ctrl+Shift+P, type "Git: Clone," and paste the URL. It handles the terminal work for you!

For example, if you want to clone the CodeHarborHub repository, you can use:

git clone [REPOSITORY_URL]

:::