{"id":1861,"date":"2021-06-09T13:41:09","date_gmt":"2021-06-09T13:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.gitprotect.io\/?p=1861"},"modified":"2023-03-21T12:15:36","modified_gmt":"2023-03-21T12:15:36","slug":"git-backup-or-git-clone-that-is-the-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gitprotect.io\/blog\/git-backup-or-git-clone-that-is-the-question\/","title":{"rendered":"Git Backup or Git Clone?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Your code is your intellectual property, the most valuable asset inside your company. And you know that. As a CTO, IT manager, software-house owner, or team leader you know how much time and costs were spent to achieve this intellectual property and how important it is to protect this property and not to lose a single line of code. That\u2019s why you should backup your GIT repositories. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Now you can say, “ok, but GIT itself is a backup tool.” Well.. not really. You don’t have to look far: April 2020 (Github), June 2020 (Github, Bitbucket), December 2020 (Bitbucket) are just a few crashes where “your” code was unavailable for a while. Could ‘backup’ be even unavailable? That sounds ridiculous and shouldn\u2019t be the case in the modern organization. We should treat our repositories as production environments<\/strong>, and we cannot afford not to have access to the production environment. Do you backup your production data? So please do a backup of your repositories too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to clone Git repository<\/h2>\n\n\n
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\"Get<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Speaking of Git, backup is not that straightforward thing. One of its primary functions is clone<\/strong>. As you probably know, clone <\/strong>allows you to … clone a repository, which means creating a local, fully functional copy<\/strong>. But what does this feature actually do? Contrary to e.g. SVN and the checkout <\/strong>command, git clone <\/strong>makes a complete copy of the repository. Every version of every file from the beginning of the project. Nice feature. To achieve that, the project directory is generated on our machine, remote-tracking branches are created, then the fetch <\/strong>operation is performed (which takes the code for the aforementioned branches), and finally pull <\/strong>function is performed for the default branch. Now all that’s left to do is to set the addresses for origin <\/strong>– which clone <\/strong>also does for us – and that’s it! Simple as that. You have the perfect copy of the cloned repository<\/strong>. Well, almost perfect, but more on that in a moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

git clone command<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Of course, the clone command can be parameterized<\/strong>. We can play with a selection of active branch – as we don’t need to pull the default one – but also, for example, we can set config params or filter some elements that we do not want to download. Sample calls: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

git clone https:\/\/myrepo.com\/project –no-tags –filter = blob: none <\/em><\/strong>
– it won’t download tags nor blob files 
git clone https:\/\/myrepo.com\/project –config core.editor vim <\/em><\/strong>
– will set our favorite editor <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can also do cloning with the –mirror <\/strong>option. That one will finally clone the entire repository<\/strong>. Literally the entire, as mirrored, repository which contains all the extended refs of the remote repository and maintains remote branch tracking configuration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How secure are your repos and metadata? Don’t push luck – secure your code with the first professional GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab backup<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Start 14 days free GitProtect trial<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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git bundle command<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It might seem that this feature is enough not to worry about backing up our repository. But that’s not entirely true. The GIT itself already gives us a hint that cloning is not enough by entering the bundle <\/strong>command. This function creates a single archive-file that contains all the refs needed to restore the repository. You can easily run clone or pull functions on that bundle file. It is not very useful for developers, as they want to have working copy and start their work easily. But the bundle is a great function to create a copy of our repository.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Use git bundle –all <\/strong>to create incremental dump files of content and copy configuration files separately. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Would such a feature exist if cloning were enough? Well, I don\u2019t think so. In addition, e.g. Github provides an API to create a repository backup, and its official documentation also encourages the use of third-party tools to do so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Visual learner?<\/strong> Then, don’t read but watch our GitProtect Academy video to find out the winner of the git clone vs. git backup battle (Psst, don’t forget to subscribe!)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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