Cloning a repo from someone else's Github and pushing it to a repo on my Github

Question

I cloned the repo at https://github.com/railstutorial/sample_app_rails_4 and made a lot of changes to it (I used it as a starting point for my own app), and now I would like to push the changed app to a repo on my own github account.

How can I change what github repo it is linked to?

Answer 1

As Deefour says, your situation isn't much unlike the one in Change the URI (URL) for a remote Git repository. When you clone a repository, it is added as a remote of yours, under the name origin. What you need to do now (as you're not using the old source anymore) is change origin's URL:

$ git remote set-url origin http://github.com/YOU/YOUR_REPO

If the original repository would update often and you want to get those updates from time to time, then instead of editing origin it would be best to add a new remote:

$ git remote add personal http://github.com/YOU/YOUR_REPO

Or maybe even call the old one upstream:

$ git remote rename origin upstream
$ git remote add origin http://github.com/YOU/YOUR_REPO

Then, whenever you want to get changes from upstream, you can do:

$ git fetch upstream

As this the source is a sample repository (seems to be kind of a template to start off), I don't think there's a need to keep it nor fork it at all - I'll go with the first alternative here.

Answer 2

GitHub: git clone someone else's repository & git push to your own repository

I'm going to refer to someone else's repository as the other repository.

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1. Create a new repository at github.com. (this is your repository)

   • Give it the same name as the other repository.
   • Don't initialize it with a README, .gitignore, or license.

2. Clone the other repository to your local machine. (if you haven't done so already)

   • git clone https://github.com/other-account/other-repository.git

3. Rename the local repository's current 'origin' to 'upstream'.

   • git remote rename origin upstream

4. Give the local repository an 'origin' that points to your repository.

   • git remote add origin https://github.com/your-account/your-repository.git

5. Push the local repository to your repository on github.

   • git push origin master

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Now 'origin' points to your repository & 'upstream' points to the other repository.

• Create a new branch for your changes with git checkout -b my-feature-branch.
• You can git commit as usual to your repository.
• Use git pull upstream master to pull changes from the other repository to your master branch.