Nowadays, software developers like to collaborate on a project to facilitate faster delivery of high-quality products. When working on such projects, it becomes very important to track the versions of the product under development. The collaborators should also track the reviews, releases, pull requests, comments, milestones, and attachments, as well as manage project issues.
Doing it manually may be a challenge, especially when the product under development is large and involves a lot of contributors. So, an easier way of doing this is required.
GitHub is the right tool for this. It will make it easier for you and your team to manage your project. When using GitHub, you will be dealing with a lot of data. You need to export this data and keep a backup of the same. You can also export the data for further analysis using data analysis software.
In this article, I will be showing you how to use Git export. All you need is a GitHub account.
What is GitHub
GitHub is a code version control and project management system as well as a social network platform designed and built for developers. With GitHub, you can work collaboratively with other people from all over the world, plan for projects and track your efforts. It is one of the largest storehouses for collaborative work in the world. GitHub makes it easy for developers to track the changes that have been made to their code.
To understand GitHub well, you must understand the following 3 concepts:
- Git
- Version Control System
- Hub
Git is a system of distributed version control developed by Linus Torvalds. This system allows developers to track changes in their codebase. Thereby, each developer maintains an entire history and codebase locally, which enables easy merging and branching. Git lets developers continue to update their projects, have bugs fixed, and add features, all with the option to revert to previous versions if they need to.
GitHub adds all the features of Git by making it a social platform for developers to interact and share projects. Users can perform branches to change the code in private, and these changes can then be integrated into the principal code through a process called pull requests. Forking further enables developers to create copies of repositories to create new projects. They then can change and customize the code according to their desires.
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Pre-requisites
To use GitHub, you need a GitHub account. If you don’t have a GitHub account, you can create one for free.
Just open the following URL on your web browser:
If you already have an account, click the “Sign in” button located on the top right corner of the screen and sign into your account.
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If you don’t have an account, click the “Sign up” button and sign up for a GitHub account.
When you log into your GitHub account, you will be taken to the homepage of your GitHub account which looks as shown below:
Image Source: GitHub
The left side of the screen shows all the repositories that you’ve created.
Image Source: GitHub
If you need to create a new repository, just click the “New” button.
Image Source: GitHub
If you are collaborating with other people on a project, you should create an organization.
Just click the “Create an organization” button located on the left side of the window.
Image Source: GitHub
You will then be prompted to choose a plan that you need to use together with your team.
GitHub offers its users three plans namely:
You can use the Free plan for free, but each team member will pay a monthly subscription fee if you choose any of the other two plans.
Image Source: GitHub
After choosing a plan, you will be taken through the process of setting up your team.
You can access all pull requests from the “Pull requests” tab.
Image Source: GitHub
All the issues that have been raised about your projects will be shown on the “Issues” tab.
Image Source: GitHub
The “Workflow” helps you search for tools that you can use to improve your workflow on GitHub.
Image Source: GitHub
It has both free and paid apps that you can use to make your GitHub tasks easy.
Image Source: GitHub
It’s up to you to search for the app that you need, set it up and begin to use it on your GitHub projects.
The “Explore” tab is where you can get GitHub repositories that match your topics of interest.
Image Source: GitHub
Working of Github
To export your GitHub account data, follow the steps given below:
Step 1: Log into your GitHub account.
Step 2: Click the dropdown button located on the right side of your profile picture in the upper right corner of the screen. Choose “Settings”.
Image Source: GitHub
Step 3: You will be taken to your profile page. Click “Account” from the vertical navigation bar shown on the left.
Image Source: GitHub
Step 4: You will see the “Start export” button that can help you to export your account data. Just click the button.
Image Source: GitHub
You will then be notified that your export is being prepared and that they will email you when it’s ready.
The export data normally includes all your repositories and profile metadata such as issues, comments, reviews, pull requests, releases, projects, attachments, milestones, events, and settings for each repository and the basic information for each user who has interacted with the repositories.
Note that the export data will be in a machine-readable format (JSON or Git), allowing you to backup your data offline.
The Git Export will be ready in less than 7 days. Now, you can wait for an email notifying you that the Git Export is ready. The email will come with a link that you can use to download the archive.
Understanding a Git Export Example
This section explains a simple Git Export command. You need to move into the Git project directory, then use this command to create a new file called “latest.tgz”.
git archive master | gzip > latest.tgz
You can run the same command using bzip2 with the following snippet:
git archive master | bzip2 > latest.tar.bz2
Understanding Git Export Help
To understand more about this command, try this code snippet:
git help archive
This Git Export command provides useful information like:
--format=<fmt>
Format of the resulting archive: tar or zip.
If this option is not given, and the output file is specified, the format is inferred from the filename if possible (e.g. writing to "foo.zip" makes the output to be in the zip format). Otherwise the output format is tar.
For more complicated Git archive examples, you can refer to the following Git help output:
git archive --format=tar --prefix=junk/ HEAD | (cd /var/tmp/ && tar xf -) Create a tar archive that contains the contents of the latest commit on the current branch, and extract it in the /var/tmp/junk directory.
git archive --format=tar --prefix=git-1.4.0/ v1.4.0 | gzip >git-1.4.0.tar.gz Create a compressed tarball for v1.4.0 release.
git archive --format=tar --prefix=git-1.4.0/ v1.4.0^{tree} | gzip >git-1.4.0.tar.gz Create a compressed tarball for v1.4.0 release, but without a global extended pax header.
git archive --format=zip --prefix=git-docs/ HEAD:Documentation/ > git-1.4.0-docs.zip Put everything in the current head's Documentation/ directory into git-1.4.0-docs.zip, with the prefix git-docs/.
git archive -o latest.zip HEAD Create a Zip archive that contains the contents of the latest commit on the current branch. Note that the output format is inferred by the extension of the output file.
Key Git Export Notes
Before proceeding with the Git Export example, you need to keep in mind the role of the .gitignore file in the export process. If some files are missing from your project directory, it could be because the .gitignore file for them has been set to ‘ignored’.
Limitations While Using Github
Here are the challenges that users face when using Git Export:
- GitHub doesn’t provide you with a way to choose the specific data that you need to export. To get this functionality, you may be required to use additional APIs (Application Programming Interfaces).
- It may take up to 7 days for the Git Export data to be ready, especially when the data is huge.
- Using Git Export to export GitHub data is a one-time data dump, you can’t keep streaming all the changes that happen to the repository.
Git Export Summary
This article discusses the Git Export in detail covering its working, a useful example, additional help, notes, and limitations of it.
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Conclusion
In this article, you’ve learned how to use GitHub and also how to use Git Export to export your GitHub account data. However, the manual method has certain drawbacks.
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FAQs
1. Is it possible to export GitHub data in bulk?
You can export multiple repositories at one time using command-line tools or the GitHub API to loop through your repositories.
2. What is the difference between cloning and exporting a repository?
Cloning duplicates the entire repository with all history, branches, whereas exporting typically tends to give a snapshot without the version history.
3. Are there GUI tools for exporting GitHub data?
Yes, there are many GUI tools in which you can export the repository data using either GitHub Desktop or SourceTree.
Nicholas Samuel is a technical writing specialist with a passion for data, having more than 14+ years of experience in the field. With his skills in data analysis, data visualization, and business intelligence, he has delivered over 200 blogs. In his early years as a systems software developer at Airtel Kenya, he developed applications, using Java, Android platform, and web applications with PHP. He also performed Oracle database backups, recovery operations, and performance tuning. Nicholas was also involved in projects that demanded in-depth knowledge of Unix system administration, specifically with HP-UX servers. Through his writing, he intends to share the hands-on experience he gained to make the lives of data practitioners better.
