I have several projects hosted on GitLab right now, but I’m thinking about switching to GitHub because it seems to have more tools that could help with my development work.
Is it actually possible to migrate my existing repositories from GitLab over to GitHub? I want to make sure I don’t lose any of my commit history or branches in the process.
If anyone has done this before, could you walk me through the basic steps? I’m also wondering if there are any common mistakes or issues I should watch out for during the migration. I don’t want to mess up my projects by doing something wrong.
Any advice on things to backup or prepare beforehand would be really helpful too.
Migrating repositories between GitLab and GitHub is indeed a smooth process if approached correctly. I recommend cloning your GitLab repository to your local machine first. Once cloned, add GitHub as a remote repository and push the code over there. This method not only gives you control but also acts as a backup of your project. Just keep in mind that some GitLab-specific features, such as CI/CD configurations and webhooks, will not be transferred automatically, so you’ll need to set those up in GitHub independently. Ensure your GitHub repository is private first if your GitLab repository was, and then you can change it to public afterward. The migration of commit history and branches will work seamlessly.
Migrating repositories from GitLab to GitHub is quite straightforward. I switched several of my own projects recently, and the built-in import tool on GitHub really streamlined the process. You simply click on the plus sign in your GitHub dashboard and select ‘Import a repository’. You then need to enter your GitLab repo’s URL, and GitHub will transition everything for you, preserving all commit histories and branches.
However, do note that if your GitLab repo is private, it should be temporarily accessible during the migration; alternatively, you can use a personal access token. Keep in mind that specific features from GitLab, like merge requests, won’t carry over, so you’ll need to recreate those in GitHub. As a precaution, I recommend cloning your GitLab repo locally to have a backup in case of any issues during the migration.