Install gickup with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository

Commands and aliases

• gickup

Project history

The public GitHub repository was created in May 2021 by Cooper Spencer. The README describes the tool as a way to clone or mirror repositories from one host to another, useful when users want backups on another host or on a local server.

The project grew around a YAML configuration model and provider-specific source and destination blocks. Its example configuration includes tokens, token files, users, organizations, SSH keys, inclusion and exclusion rules, filters, gists, wikis, issues, starred repositories, and contributed repositories, showing an evolution from simple clone automation toward cross-forge backup orchestration.

Adoption history

gickup serves a community need created by code-host concentration and forge fragmentation: developers, open-source maintainers, and small organizations often want a portable copy of their repositories outside a single vendor account. Its provider list includes both major commercial forges and self-hosted or community forges, making it useful for migration and backup plans.

Packaging through Homebrew, Nix, Arch AUR, Fedora COPR, Docker images, and GitHub releases made the tool easy to schedule on personal servers and CI-like runners.

How it is used

Practitioners write a YAML config describing source accounts and destination targets, then run `gickup path-to-conf.yml` or use the Docker Compose workflow documented in the README. Common jobs mirror all repositories for a user or organization, include or exclude selected names, copy wikis or issues where supported, and back up to local directories or another Git host.

The example configuration shows credentials supplied as tokens, token files, username-password pairs, SSH keys, or GitHub App credentials, with filters for stars, last activity, archive status, forks, and languages.

Why package nerds care

gickup is significant to package-minded users because it turns a brittle personal shell script into a packaged, configurable binary. It is the kind of tool installed on a NAS, VPS, or workstation and run on a schedule to keep repository copies boring and restorable.

Timeline

• 2021: Public GitHub repository created.
• 2024: Release series included v0.10.36.
• 2025: Release series included v0.10.39.
• 2026: Release series reached v0.10.45.

Related projects

• gickup is related to Git, GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, Forgejo, Gogs, Bitbucket, OneDev, SourceHut, S3-compatible storage, and repository mirroring workflows.

Sources

• https://api.github.com/repos/cooperspencer/gickup
• https://github.com/cooperspencer/gickup
• https://github.com/cooperspencer/gickup/blob/main/conf.example.yml
• https://github.com/cooperspencer/gickup/releases