Introduction: How to Fork and Clone Repositories in GitHub

About: I am the CEO of Recognant.com. I build AI that is used to do everything from moderate comments, to find off label uses for FDA approved drugs to treat children with cancer, to tracking down human traffickers.

GitHub is a collaboration tool. A group of people can each have their own individual and local copy of a repository, that the group can sync to the same remote copy in the cloud.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to clone and fork repositories.

Step 1: Fork From GitHub

In order to synch your local repository on GitHub, you will need push and pull permission. To get push and pull permission on an open source project, you will need to fork it from GitHub to your own account.

I went to the open source project called Spoon-Knife and clicked on the "Fork" button for this repository. Forking is the core element of social coding on GitHub and only takes one click.

Step 2: Clone to GitHub for Mac

Once you fork the project to your GitHub, you will want to "Clone" it to GItHub for Mac. You can quickly clone repositories from your account of any project you belong to. You want to have a syncable, local copy that you can make changes to and push to GitHub.