Preparing the source organization on GitHub
-
Ensure that you have owner permissions on the source organization's repositories.
-
Generate an access token with the
repo
andadmin:org
scopes on GitHub.com. -
To minimize downtime, make a list of repositories you want to export from the source instance. You can add multiple repositories to an export at once using a text file that lists the URL of each repository on a separate line.
Exporting the organization's repositories
Note: Fork relationships do not persist after a migration.
To export repository data from GitHub.com, use the Migrations API.
The Migrations API is currently in a preview period, which means that the endpoints and parameters may change in the future.
Generating a migration archive
Note: Locking a repository prevents all write access to the repository. You cannot associate new teams or collaborators with a locked repository.
If you're performing a trial run, you do not need to lock the repository. When you migrate data from a repository that's in use, GitHub strongly recommends locking the repository. For more information, see "About ghe-migrator."
-
Notify members of your organization that you'll be performing a migration. The export can take several minutes, depending on the number of repositories being exported. The full migration including import may take several hours so we recommend doing a trial run in order to determine how long the full process will take. For more information, see "About ghe-migrator."
-
Start a migration by sending a
POST
request to the migration endpoint. You'll need:-
Your access token for authentication.
-
A list of the repositories you want to migrate:
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer GITHUB_ACCESS_TOKEN" \ -X POST \ -H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json" \ -d'{"lock_repositories":true,"repositories":["ORG_NAME</em>/REPO_NAME", "ORG_NAME/REPO_NAME"]}' \ https://api.github.com/orgs/ORG_NAME/migrations
-
If you want to lock the repositories before migrating them, make sure
lock_repositories
is set totrue
. This is highly recommended. -
You can exclude file attachments by passing
exclude_attachments: true
to the endpoint. File attachments can be large and may needlessly bloat your final migration archive. The final archive size must be less than 20 GB.
This request returns a unique
id
which represents your migration. You'll need it for subsequent calls to the Migrations API. -
-
Send a
GET
request to the migration status endpoint to fetch the status of a migration. You'll need:-
Your access token for authentication.
-
The unique
id
of the migration:curl -H "Authorization: Bearer GITHUB_ACCESS_TOKEN" \ -H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json" \ https://api.github.com/orgs/ORG_NAME/migrations/ID
A migration can be in one of the following states:
pending
, which means the migration hasn't started yet.exporting
, which means the migration is in progress.exported
, which means the migration finished successfully.failed
, which means the migration failed.
-
-
After your migration has exported, download the migration archive by sending a
GET
request to the migration download endpoint. You'll need:-
Your access token for authentication.
-
The unique
id
of the migration:curl -H "Authorization: Bearer GITHUB_ACCESS_TOKEN" \ -H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json" \ -L -o migration_archive.tar.gz \ https://api.github.com/orgs/ORG_NAME/migrations/ID/archive
-
-
The migration archive is automatically deleted after seven days. If you would prefer to delete it sooner, you can send a
DELETE
request to the migration archive delete endpoint. You'll need:-
Your access token for authentication.
-
The unique
id
of the migration:curl -H "Authorization: Bearer GITHUB_ACCESS_TOKEN" \ -X DELETE \ -H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json" \ https://api.github.com/orgs/ORG_NAME/migrations/ID/archive
-
-
To prepare the archived migration data for import into a GitHub Enterprise Server instance, see "Migrating data to GitHub Enterprise Server".