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A fork is a linked copy, a clone is just a copy. They are not the same. Deleting your repository or changing its visibility affects that repository's forks.
by bastardoperator 2y ago
A fork is a linked copy, a clone is just a copy. They are not the same.
Deleting your repository or changing its visibility affects that repository's forks.
- sakjur 2y agoForks predate GitHub and have another almost opposing definition that sets up for a confusion here. By that lingo forks go their own way (like a fork in the road) independently of the upstream and clones are copies of an upstream.
- bastardoperator 2y agoI agree it does... fork() creates a new process by duplicating the calling process. Thats similar to what happens on git providers, you create a new repo by duplicating it, and the repo is linked aka child. Many forks do go their own way. You can choose to pull from upstream or completely ignore it.
- simoncion 2y agoDeleting your repository or changing its visibility affects that repository's forks. Sure, but this only matters for 'private' repos. See <https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-pull-requests/working-with-forks/what-happens-to-forks-when-a-repository-is-deleted-or-changes-visibility https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-...>. Github does some cute things behind the scenes to save space, but for all 'public' or 'internal' repos, what Github calls a fork is (from a Github user's perspective) identical to what happens when you run 'git clone' on your machine.