Forking from GitHub to Bitbucket

I'm working on a project based on CakePHP, that's hosted on GitHub. My project is being hosted on Bitbucket. Both of them use git. Basically I'd like to create a ‘fork’ (I don't know if I'm using the right terms, since I'm new to git) of CakePHP in my Bitbucket repository, in order to be able to get the updates without the need to download all the CakePHP zip/tar and replace the folder, then commit and push, but maybe with a ‘merge’(?).

It's not possible to send "pull request" across different sites today. I've added a feature request for this in the Bitbucket issue tracker: #3288. I suggest you add yourself as a follower if you want to track this.

However, you can still move the source from GitHub to Bitbucket without having to download any zip files or tarballs. You make a clone from GitHub and push to Bitbucket:

$ git clone https://github.com/cakephp/cakephp
$ cd cakephp
$ git push [email protected]:mg/cakephp.git master

I created mg/cakephp as an empty Git repository in Bitbucket first. That way you can push/pull changesets from GitHub to Bitbucket.

The workflow below adds the github repository as a a new remote called sync and the bitbucket remote as origin. It also adds a branch called github to track the github repository and a branch called master to track the bitbucket repository. It assumes you have a bitbucket repository called "myrepository" which is empty.

Setup remotes

# setup local repo
mkdir myrepository
cd myrepository
git init

# add  bitbucket remote as "origin"
git remote add origin ssh://[email protected]/aleemb/myrepository.git

# add github remote as "sync"
git remote add sync https://github.com/aleemb/laravel.git

# verify remotes
git remote -v
# should show fetch/push for "origin" and "sync" remotes

Setup branches

# first pull from github using the "sync" remote
git pull sync

# setup local "github" branch to track "sync" remote's "master" branch
git branch --track github sync/master

# switch to the new branch
git checkout github

# create new master branched out of github branch
git checkout -b master

# push local "master" branch to "origin" remote (bitbucket)
git push -u origin master

Now you should have the local github branch tracking the github repo's master branch. And you should have the local master branch tracking the bitbucket repo (master branch by default).

This makes it easy to do a pull on the github branch, then merge those changes onto the master branch (rebase preferred over merge though) and then you can push the master branch (will push it to bitbucket).

If you want to keep your repo up to date, use two remotes: Github (upstream) and Bitbucket (origin) like this:

# Clone original CakePHP source code from Github
git clone --mirror https://github.com/cakephp/cakephp
cd cakephp
# Rename remote from `origin` to `upstream`
git remote rename origin upstream
# Add your Bitbucket repo (this is where your code will be pushed)
git remote add origin https://bitbucket/your/repo.git
# Push everything to Bitbucket
git push --mirror origin

To pull updates to CakePHP from Github:

git pull upstream master

To push your code changes to Bitbucket:

git push origin master

When creating a new repository in BitBucket, click the button Import repository at the top right. Enter the https url found when clicking Clone or download in Github for the repository you want to fork.

Give your repository a name, configure your privacy settings, and there you go!