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I recently decided to move all my source code to Github.

First, I don’t want to work with Mercurial anymore. It’s not that I think Mercurial does not work, but I simply want to start using Git as my version control system. I think most of the projects I work with are using Git. I want therefore to improve my skills using Git.

Converting from Mercurial to Git

The first step was to convert my repositories from Mercurial to Git. I didn’t want to lose file histories. I was lucky enough to find a solution which helped me to do it in an easy and comfortable way.

I have to mention that, I used a Linux machine to do all the conversion. I am pretty sure it would also work with Windows. Maybe one or other command could be slightly different, though.

Changing the structure of the repository

I finally had my repositories as Git repositories on my local hard drive. I wanted to change the structure of the repositories in the next step. I wanted to integrate some of the repositories into another and do several other changes before I pushed it to Github.

Choosing a Github price plan

I want to keep some of my source code private. Some of it does not have the state that I want to show them to the world. Other code snippets are for school projects which are on a very basic level. Nobody would care about these projects.

I, therefore, needed to choose a price plan. I decided to go with the cheapest price plan called Micro. This price plan offers me up to five private repositories. I only pay 7$ a month which sounds really fair.

Conclusion

It is simple to move to Github when you have the right tools. It depends on the state of your source code and which source control system you are currently working with. But what I’ve seen during my recherche is that there are many tools available. I would do it again if I had to decide again.

I am now ready to start new projects, contribute to the existing projects and handle everything on a single platform using the same version control system. I think this significantly helps to simplify my development process.

Free Micro account for students

According to a friend, Github offers a free Micro account for students.

Claudio Bernasconi

I'm an enthusiastic Software Engineer with a passion for teaching .NET development on YouTube, writing articles about my journey on my blog, and making people smile.