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What are the differences between “forking,” “cloning,” and downloading the project as a zip file on GitHub?

21st October 2013

My answer to What are the differences between “forking,” “cloning,” and downloading the project as a zip file on GitHub? on Quora

“fork” creates a copy of the project hosted on your own GitHub account. This is an exclusive Build software better, together. (links to: http://Github.com) feature and not a Git feature.

“clone” uses git software on your computer to download the source code and it’s entire version history.

“download zip” creates a zip file of just the current version of the source code for you to download—the project history is not included.

Posted 21st October 2013 at 6:29 pm · Follow me on Mastodon, Bluesky, Twitter or subscribe to my newsletter

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This is What are the differences between “forking,” “cloning,” and downloading the project as a zip file on GitHub? by Simon Willison, posted on 21st October 2013.

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