Syncing GitLab and GitHub Repos

Purpose

With all of the latest panic of Microsoft buying GitHub, and being that I have been a user of both GitHub and GitLab for years I wanted to prepare myself in the off chance that I may decide to abandon GitHub as well. I have definitely invested a huge amount of time and effort into my GitHub repos so that move may never happen but just in case it does I wanted to get this together and start planning. GitLab definitely has a very easy way to import only certain GitHub repos or you can import all of them with one click of a button (which I did) and for me that was nearly 400 repos so it took some time but was very simple. One thing to note is that when you do import your GitHub repos into GitLab, the repos will by default be setup as private repos (a very safe move).

In this scenario we will be keeping GitHub as our primary source with GitLab being setup to sync (push) only (for now!).

NOTE: The repos must already exist on GitHub and GitLab. You can easily import the GitHub repo into GitLab using their import functionality.

Preparing

Check current Git Remotes:

git remote -v
origin	https://github.com/mrlesmithjr/Ansible.git (fetch)
origin	https://github.com/mrlesmithjr/Ansible.git (push)

In my scenario I will be switching to using SSH rather than HTTPS for simplicity of various GitLab accounts that I have which must remain seperate. So you must first add your SSH key to each GitHub and GitLab.

Remove the current origin remote:

git remote remove origin

NOTE: You do not need to do this if you are not changing either SSH or HTTPS. But you can also just as easy switch this without removing origin:

git remote set-url origin [email protected]:mrlesmithjr/Ansible.git

Add new remote github:

git remote add github [email protected]:mrlesmithjr/Ansible.git

Add new remote gitlab:

git remote add gitlab [email protected]:mrlesmithjr/Ansible.git

Now check your current Git remotes:

git remote -v
github	[email protected]:mrlesmithjr/Ansible.git (fetch)
github	[email protected]:mrlesmithjr/Ansible.git (push)
gitlab	[email protected]:mrlesmithjr/Ansible.git (fetch)
gitlab	[email protected]:mrlesmithjr/Ansible.git (push)

Now let’s add back our origin remote:

git remote add origin [email protected]:mrlesmithjr/Ansible.git

Now we will add gitlab as an additional origin remote (for push only):

git remote set-url --add --push origin [email protected]:mrlesmithjr/Ansible.git

And if we now check our Git remotes:

git remote -v
github	[email protected]:mrlesmithjr/Ansible.git (fetch)
github	[email protected]:mrlesmithjr/Ansible.git (push)
gitlab	[email protected]:mrlesmithjr/Ansible.git (fetch)
gitlab	[email protected]:mrlesmithjr/Ansible.git (push)
origin	[email protected]:mrlesmithjr/Ansible.git (fetch)
origin	[email protected]:mrlesmithjr/Ansible.git (push)
origin	[email protected]:mrlesmithjr/Ansible.git (push)

And finally we must set our upstream remote because we removed our original origin remote:

git push --set-upstream origin master
Branch 'master' set up to track remote branch 'master' from 'origin'.
Everything up-to-date
Branch 'master' set up to track remote branch 'master' from 'origin'.
Everything up-to-date

And as you can see from the above we have now pushed to both GitHub and GitLab. Obviously there were not any changes but from here on out when you make changes, commit, and push the changes, both GitHub and GitLab will be in sync.

You may have also noticed we added remotes named github and gitlab individually when we could have simply just added the new origin remote. This is only to give us the ability to specifically fetch/push to the respective remote if needed.

Conclusion

This was mainly put together for my own personal reference but maybe it might also benefit others at the same time. So as always, ENJOY!

NOTE: Don’t just jump on the bandwagon of #movingtogitlab but definitely prepare yourself if it makes sense and keep OSS alive.