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How to fork a public Azure DevOps repository without them adding me to their organisation members?

I cannot find the fork button of a public Azure DevOps repository.

As Azure DevOps finally got some attractive features as a package like no member limitations for open source projects and other azure based features, I was wondering how someone outside of my organization could fork my public project without me adding them to a team of my organization? like you would do on GitHub for pull request purposes for example.

Solution

  • I assume the feature you want in VSTS is Clone.

    In github, fork means a request for github to clone this project and register it under mine. This does not same with fork which in VSTS . In VSTS, fork means the user must have the permission of Create Repository in your organization, and this permission basic on this user need to be member of this organization.

    According to your description, I think the feature of Clone in VSTS can meet what you want. While you set your project as public, the users who does not be the member of your organization can still view your project. And also, on the page of Files, they can see a button Clone . They can use this clone url to import repos on their own project, so that can finish the same effect which named Fork in github.

    enter image description here

    But, the precondition is you must turn Allow public projects on under your organization setting.

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    Or the users who does not the member of your organization could not access the project, even if you set your project as public.

    Updated:

    As you described in comment, I’m afraid that it only supported with fork until now. But also, Fork can only be supported across project. In one word, if you want have the whole feature which same with fork in github, you must invite them in and grant them the permission of Create Repository:

    enter image description here

    Here has a similar feature suggestion raised in our official Developer Community: Forking repos across organizations

    You can vote and comment there, while it has enough votes, the Product Group will take it in plan seriously.

    If this feature can be happen, I think you will not need invite them into organization anymore.