github-backup is a simple tool you run in a git repository you cloned from
GitHub. It backs up everything GitHub publishes about the repository,
including branches, tags, other forks, issues, comments, wikis, milestones,
pull requests, and watchers.
## Installation
git clone git://github.com/joeyh/github-backup
cd github-backup
make
(You will need ghc, hslogger, and MissingH installed first.)
Or use cabal:
cabal install github-backup --bindir=$HOME/bin
(Cabal is bundled with the [Haskell Platform](http://www.haskell.org/platform/).)
## Use
Run `github-backup` with no parameters, inside a git repository cloned
from GitHub to back up that repository.
Or, run `github-backup username` to clone and back up all of a GitHub
user's repositories, as well as all the repositories watched by that
user.
(Also works for organization names.)
## Why backup GitHub repositories
There are a couple of reasons to want to back this stuff up:
* In case something happens to GitHub. More generally because
keeping your data in the cloud *and* relying on the cloud to
back it up is foolish.
* In case someone takes down a repository that you were interested in.
If you run github-backup with your username, it will back up all
the repositories you have watched.
* So you can keep working on your repository while on a plane, or
on a remote beach or mountaintop. Just like Linus intended.
## What to expect
Each time you run github-backup, it will find any new forks on GitHub. It
will add remotes to your repository for the forks, using names like
`github_torvalds_subsurface`. It will fetch from every fork.
It downloads metadata from each fork. This is stored
into a branch named "github". Each fork gets a directory in there,
like `torvalds_subsurface`. Inside the directory there will be some
files, like `torvalds_subsurface/watchers`. There may be further
directories, like for comments: `torvalds_subsurface/comments/1`.
You can follow the commits to the github branch to see what information
changed on GitHub over time.
The format of the files in the github branch is currently Haskell
serialized data types. This is plain text, and readable, if you squint.
## Limitations
github-backup is repository-focused. It does not try to back up other
information from GitHub. In particular, social network stuff, like
users who are following you, is not backed up.
github-backup does not log into GitHub, so it cannot backup private
repositories.
github-backup will find and backup forks of a repository, and all forks
of those forks, etc. However, it cannot go *up* the fork tree. So if
your GitHub repositoriy is a fork of something else, the something else
won't be backed up. There is an easy solution though. Just add the
parent as a git remote. Then github-backup will find it, and back it up.
Notes added to commits and lines of code don't get backed up yet.
There is only recently API support for this.
The labels that can be added to issues and milestones are not backed up.
Neither are the hooks. They could be, but don't seem important
enough for the extra work involved. Yell if you need them.
github-backup re-downloads all issues, comments, and so on
each time it's run. This may be slow if your repo has a lot of them,
or even if it just has a lot of forks.
Bear in mind that this uses the GitHub API; don't run it every 5 minutes.
GitHub [rate limits](http://developer.github.com/v3/#rate-limiting) the
API to some small number of requests per hour when used without
authentication. To avoid this limit, you can set `GITHUB_USER` and
`GITHUB_PASSWORD` in the environment and it will log in when making
(most) API requests.
Anyway, github-backup *does* do an incremental backup, picking up where it
left off, so will complete the backup eventually even if it's rate limited.
## Author
github-backup was written by Joey Hess <joey@kitenet.net>
It is made possible thanks to:
* Mike Burns's [haskell github library](http://hackage.haskell.org/package/github)
* GitHub, for providing an API exposing this data.