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This article will teach you how to use Git to clone a private repository hosted on Github.

Git is a version control system used to track changes in a project directory. Git uses commits for such purposes.

Github provides Internet hosting for software development and version control using Git. We can have both public and private Git repositories on Github.

We can clone a private repository hosted on Github using the correct credentials. We will now illustrate this with an example.

Clone a private repository in Git

To clone the public repository hosted on Github, we need to run git clonethe command as shown below.

$ git clone https://github.com/d2l-ai/berkeley-stat-157.git

This will clone the public repository into the new directory created. Additionally, it creates remote-tracking branches for each branch in the cloned repository.

It then creates and checks out an initial branch derived from the repository's currently active branch.

To clone a private repository hosted on Github, we need the correct credentials.

Typically, on Github, we can enable two-factor authentication. Two-factor authentication (2FA) provides an extra layer of security when logging into a website or application.

When two-factor authentication (2FA) is enabled, we must provide a username and password as well as another form of authentication that only we know or have access to.

Therefore, after enabling two-factor authentication (2FA), we must provide a personal access token (PAT) instead of a password when cloning a private repository using an HTTPS URL.

So, first, we need to create a Personal Access Token (PAT) on Github.

To create a Personal Access Token (PAT) on Github, we need to follow the steps given here, Creating a Personal Access Token.

After creating a personal access token (PAT), we can now git cloneclone a private repository using the command.

Assume that we have an account on Github with username johndoe. We must also create a Personal Access Token (PAT) for this account on Github.

We have a private repository on Github called My_Project. To clone the private repository on Github My_Project, we need to execute git clonethe command.

$ git clone https://github.com/johndoe/My_Project.git
Cloning into 'My_Project'...
Username for 'https://github.com': johndoe
Password for 'https://johndoe@github.com':

git cloneWhen prompted when executing the command, we have to enter our username johndoe. For the password, we need to enter our Personal Access Token (PAT) (which we created for this purpose) instead of our Github login password.

After verifying the credentials, git clonethe command will start fetching My_Projectthe Git repository and cloning it to our local system.

We can view our personal access token (PAT) at this location on Github, which is the Github Personal Access Token.

So, we learned how to use Git to clone a private repository hosted on Github.