2 ms·

What does "private fork" mean in this context? I created a fork of a project by cloning it to my own machine and set origin to an empty private repository on Gi

What does "private fork" mean in this context? I created a fork of a project by cloning it to my own machine and set origin to an empty private repository on GitHub. I manually merge upstream changes on my machine. Is my repository accessible?

andersa 2y ago
No, that would be the "copy the repository" approach. Private fork is when you do it through their UI. As far as I know, it is not accessible.
swozey 2y ago
Because you never git pushed to the fork it's not aware of your repo, you're ok. What I don't know is if in 3 months you DO set your remote origin to that fork to for instance, pull upstream patches into your private repo, you're still not pushing, only pulling, so I would THINK they'd still never get your changes, but I don't know if git does some sort of log sync when you do a pull as well. Maybe that would wind up having the commit hash available.
masklinn 2y ago
It’s not. The feature here works because a network of forks known by GitHub has a unified storage, that’s what makes things like PRs work transparently and keep working if you delete the fork (kinda, it closes the PR but the contents don’t change).
dathinab 2y ago
then it's fine the issue is the `fork` mechanism of github is not semantically like a `git clone` it's more like creating a larger git repo in which all forks weather private or not are contained and which doesn't properly implement access management (at least point 2&3 wouldn't be an issue if they did) there are also some implications form point 1 that forks do in some way infer with gc-ing orphan commits (e.g. the non synced commits in he deleted repo in point 1) at least that should be a bug IMHO one which also costs them storage (also to be clear for me 2&3 are security vulnerabilities no matter if they are classified as intended behavior)

2 ms·

What does "private fork" mean in this context? I created a fork of a project by cloning it to my own machine and set origin to an empty private repository on Gi

by kayodelycaon 2y ago

andersa 2y ago
No, that would be the "copy the repository" approach. Private fork is when you do it through their UI. As far as I know, it is not accessible.
swozey 2y ago
Because you never git pushed to the fork it's not aware of your repo, you're ok. What I don't know is if in 3 months you DO set your remote origin to that fork to for instance, pull upstream patches into your private repo, you're still not pushing, only pulling, so I would THINK they'd still never get your changes, but I don't know if git does some sort of log sync when you do a pull as well. Maybe that would wind up having the commit hash available.
masklinn 2y ago
It’s not. The feature here works because a network of forks known by GitHub has a unified storage, that’s what makes things like PRs work transparently and keep working if you delete the fork (kinda, it closes the PR but the contents don’t change).
dathinab 2y ago
then it's fine the issue is the `fork` mechanism of github is not semantically like a `git clone` it's more like creating a larger git repo in which all forks weather private or not are contained and which doesn't properly implement access management (at least point 2&3 wouldn't be an issue if they did) there are also some implications form point 1 that forks do in some way infer with gc-ing orphan commits (e.g. the non synced commits in he deleted repo in point 1) at least that should be a bug IMHO one which also costs them storage (also to be clear for me 2&3 are security vulnerabilities no matter if they are classified as intended behavior)