How to transform a fork to a repository?

[Marco-Sulla]

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I started to work to https://github.com/Marco-Sulla/python-frozendict forking the original repo. Now I am the official maintainer on Pypi, and I started to realize that a fork has not the same visibility of a normal repo. It's not included in searches on Github and in Google too.

How can I transform the fork in a normal repo?

[airtower-luna]

There's a "detach fork" option in the support menu: https://support.github.com/request/fork

Clicking it opens a chatbot. I haven't had a need to use it so far, so I can only say that I hope it works. 😉

[Marco-Sulla]

Thank you, ticket opened and finger crossed X-D

[jadurani]

Hey @Marco-Sulla 👋🏽 was the detachment successful on your end? how long did it take?

[Marco-Sulla]

Yes, and it was very quick.

[AbderraoufAbla]

Unfortunately, you cannot directly convert a forked repository into a standalone repository on GitHub. However, you can turn your fork into a standalone repository by creating a new repository and copying the contents of your fork into it. Here's how you can do it:

1. Create a new repository on GitHub by clicking on the "New" button on your GitHub dashboard and giving it a name.
2. Clone your forked repository to your local machine using the git clone command.
3. Change your current directory to the cloned repository and remove the link to the original repository using the git remote remove command.
4. Add a new remote link to the repository you just created on GitHub using the git remote add command.
5. Push the changes to the new repository using the git push command.

Here's an example of the commands you can use:

Clone your forked repository to your local machine

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/python-frozendict.git

Change your current directory to the cloned repository

cd python-frozendict

Remove the link to the original repository

git remote remove origin

Add a new remote link to the repository you just created on GitHub

git remote add origin https://github.com/yourusername/new-repository.git

Push the changes to the new repository

git push -u origin master

After you've pushed the changes to the new repository, you can delete the forked repository on GitHub. Note that this process will not preserve the forks, stars, or watchers of your original repository.

Hope this helps! 🙌🙌

[airtower-luna]

Unfortunately, you cannot directly convert a forked repository into a standalone repository on GitHub.

This is plainly wrong, as I mentioned above. Sure, creating a new repository will give you a standalone repository, but you'll lose all issues, PRs, etc. and effectively kick out all watchers, people who starred the repo, and so on. So it's the worst possible option.

[mikekellyonline]

Random Followup for this...what if you have been working on a fork and the maintainer is absent for more than 2 years on merging any PR's? Would that be a reasonable cause to "takeover" the project?