- gitbackup - Backup your GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket repositories
gitbackup
is a tool to backup your git repositories from GitHub (including GitHub enterprise),
GitLab (including custom GitLab installations), or Bitbucket.
gitbackup
currently has two operation modes:
- The first and original operating mode is to create clones of only your git repository. This is supported for Bitbucket, GitHub and Gitlab.
- The second operating mode is only available for GitHub where you can create a user migration (including orgs) which you get back as a .tar.gz file containing all the artefacts that GitHub supports via their Migration API.
If you are following along my Linux Journal article (published in 2017), please obtain the version of the source tagged with lj-0.1.
Binary releases are available from the Releases page. Please download the binary corresponding to your OS
and architecture and copy the binary somewhere in your $PATH
. It is recommended to rename the binary to gitbackup
or gitbackup.exe
(on Windows).
If you are on MacOS, a community member has created a Homebrew formula.
gitbackup
requires a GitHub API access token for
backing up GitHub repositories, a GitLab personal access token
for GitLab repositories, and a username and app password for
Bitbucket repositories.
You can supply the tokens to gitbackup
using GITHUB_TOKEN
and GITLAB_TOKEN
environment variables
respectively, and the Bitbucket credentials with BITBUCKET_USERNAME
and BITBUCKET_PASSWORD
.
Starting with the 0.6 release, if you run gitbackup
without specifying GITHUB_TOKEN
, it will prompt you to complete
a oAuth flow to grant the necessary access:
$ ./gitbackup -service github -github.repoType starred
Copy code: <some code>
then open: https://github.com/login/device
Once your authorize the app, gitbackup
will retrieve the token, and also store it in your operating system's
keychain/keyring (using the 99designs/keyring package - thanks!). Next
time you run it, it will ask you for the keyring password and retrieve the token automatically.
For the App password, the following permissions are required:
Account:Read
Repositories:Read
repo
: Reading repositories, including private repositoriesuser
andadmin:org
: Basically, this givesgitbackup
a lot of permissions than you may be comfortable with. However, these are required for the user migration and org migration operations.
api
: Grants complete read/write access to the API, including all groups and projects. For some reason,read_user
andread_repository
is not sufficient.
When you provide the tokens via environment variables, they remain accessible in your shell history
and via the processes' environment for the lifetime of the process. By default, SSH authentication
is used to clone your repositories. If use-https-clone
is specified, private repositories
are cloned via https
basic auth and the token provided will be stored in the repositories'
.git/config
.
Typing -help
will display the command line options that gitbackup
recognizes:
$ gitbackup -help
Usage of ./gitbackup:
-backupdir string
Backup directory
-bare
Clone bare repositories
-githost.url string
DNS of the custom Git host
-github.createUserMigration
Download user data
-github.createUserMigrationRetry
Retry creating the GitHub user migration if we get an error (default true)
-github.createUserMigrationRetryMax int
Number of retries to attempt for creating GitHub user migration (default 5)
-github.listUserMigrations
List available user migrations
-github.namespaceWhitelist string
Organizations/Users from where we should clone (separate each value by a comma: 'user1,org2')
-github.repoType string
Repo types to backup (all, owner, member, starred) (default "all")
-github.waitForUserMigration
Wait for migration to complete (default true)
-gitlab.projectMembershipType string
Project type to clone (all, owner, member, starred) (default "all")
-gitlab.projectVisibility string
Visibility level of Projects to clone (internal, public, private) (default "internal")
-ignore-fork
Ignore repositories which are forks
-ignore-private
Ignore private repositories/projects
-service string
Git Hosted Service Name (github/gitlab/bitbucket)
-use-https-clone
Use HTTPS for cloning instead of SSH
To backup all your own GitHub repositories to the default backup directory ($HOME/.gitbackup/
):
$ GITHUB_TOKEN=secret$token gitbackup -service github
To backup only the GitHub repositories which you are the "owner" of:
$ GITHUB_TOKEN=secret$token gitbackup -service github -github.repoType owner
To backup only the GitHub repositories which you are the "member" of:
$ GITHUB_TOKEN=secret$token gitbackup -service github -github.repoType member
Separately, to backup GitHub repositories you have starred:
$ GITHUB_TOKEN=secret$token gitbackup -service github -github.repoType starred
Additionally, to backup only the GitHub repositories under 'user1' and 'org3':
$ GITHUB_TOKEN=secret$token gitbackup -service github -github.namespaceWhitelist "user1,org3"
To backup all projects you either own or are a member of which have their visibility set to
"internal" on https://gitlab.com
to the default backup directory ($HOME/.gitbackup/
):
$ GITLAB_TOKEN=secret$token gitbackup -service gitlab
To backup only the GitLab projects (either you are an owner or member of) which are "public"
$ GITLAB_TOKEN=secret$token gitbackup -service gitlab -gitlab.projectVisibility public
To backup only the private repositories (either you are an owner or member of):
$ GITLAB_TOKEN=secret$token gitbackup -service gitlab -gitlab.projectVisibility private
To backup public repositories which you are an owner of:
$ GITLAB_TOKEN=secret$token gitbackup \
-service gitlab \
-gitlab.projectVisibility public \
-gitlab.projectMembershipType owner
To backup public repositories which you are an member of:
$ GITLAB_TOKEN=secret$token gitbackup \
-service gitlab \
-gitlab.projectVisibility public \
-gitlab.projectMembershipType member
To backup GitLub repositories you have starred:
$ GITLAB_TOKEN=secret$token gitbackup -service gitlab \
-gitlab.projectMembershipType starred \
-gitlab.projectVisibility public
To specify a custom GitHub enterprise or GitLab location, specify the service
as well as the
the githost.url
flag, like so
$ GITLAB_TOKEN=secret$token gitbackup -service gitlab -githost.url https://git.yourhost.com
To backup all your Bitbucket repositories to the default backup directory ($HOME/.gitbackup/
):
$ BITBUCKET_USERNAME=username BITBUCKET_PASSWORD=password gitbackup -service bitbucket
To specify a custom backup directory, we can use the backupdir
flag:
$ GITHUB_TOKEN=secret$token gitbackup -service github -backupdir /data/
This will create a github.com
directory in /data
and backup all your repositories there instead.
Similarly, it will create a gitlab.com
directory, if you are backing up repositories from gitlab
, and a
bitbucket.com
directory if you are backing up from Bitbucket.
If you have specified a Git Host URL, it will create a directory structure data/host-url/
.
To clone bare repositories, we can use the bare
flag:
$ GITHUB_TOKEN=secret$token gitbackup -service github -bare
This will create a directory structure like github.com/org/repo.git
containing bare repositories.
gitbackup
starting from the 0.6 release includes support for downloading your user data/organization data as
made available via the Migrations API. As of this
release, you can create an user migration (including your owned organizations data) and download the migration
artefact using the following command:
$ ./gitbackup -service github -github.createUserMigration -ignore-fork -github.repoType owner
2021/05/14 05:05:27 /home/runner/.gitbackup/github.com doesn't exist, creating it
2021/05/14 05:05:35 Creating a user migration for 129 repos
2021/05/14 05:05:46 Waiting for migration state to be exported: 0xc0002a6260
2021/05/14 05:06:48 Waiting for migration state to be exported: 0xc000290070
..
2021/05/14 05:33:44 Waiting for migration state to be exported: 0xc0001c2020
2021/05/14 05:34:46 Downloading file to: /home/runner/.gitbackup/github.com/user-migration-571089.tar.gz
2021/05/14 05:35:00 Creating a org migration (FedoraScientific) for 19 repos
2021/05/14 05:35:03 Waiting for migration state to be exported: 0xc000144050
..
2021/05/14 05:39:05 Downloading file to: /home/runner/.gitbackup/github.com/FedoraScientific-migration-571098.tar.gz
..
2021/05/14 05:46:16 Downloading file to: /home/runner/.gitbackup/github.com/practicalgo-migration-571103.tar.gz
You can then integrate this with your own scripting to push the data to S3 for example (See an example workflow via scheduled github actions here).
If you have Go 1.19.x installed, you can clone the repository and:
$ go build
The built binary will be gitbackup
.