How to download from GitHub

Here are the steps to download files or repositories from GitHub:

How To Download a Single File from GitHub

1. Navigate to the repository containing the file you want to download.
2. Browse to the file you want to download and click on it to open the file view.
3. Click the “Raw” button to view the raw file content.
4. Right-click anywhere on the page and select “Save as” to save the file to your local machine.

To Download an Entire Repository

1. Navigate to the repository you want to download.
2. Click the green “Code” button towards the top-right of the repository.
3. In the dropdown, click “Download ZIP”.
4. The repository will be downloaded as a ZIP file on your local machine.

To Clone a Repository (Using Git)

1. Install Git on your local machine if you haven’t already.
2. Navigate to the repository you want to clone.
3. Click the green “Code” button and copy the URL for the repository.
4. Open your terminal/command prompt and navigate to the directory where you want to clone the repository.
5. Type git clone followed by the copied URL and hit Enter.
6. The repository will be cloned to your local machine.

Cloning a repository using Git allows you to not only download the files but also track changes, create branches, and contribute back to the original repository if desired. Downloading a ZIP is best if you simply want a local copy of the files without Git functionality.

How to download from GitHub using Terminal

How to download from GitHub Command Line

To download specific files or directories from a GitHub repository using the command line, you can use the following methods:

1. Using wget or curl

This allows you to download a single file by providing the raw URL of the file.

# Download a single file
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/username/repo/branch/path/to/file

# or 

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/username/repo/branch/path/to/file

To download an entire directory, you can use the following command which will recursively clone the directory structure:

wget -r -np -nH --cut-dirs=4 -R "index.html*" https://github.com/username/repo/trunk/path/to/directory

Replace username, repo, branch, and path/to/file or path/to/directory with the appropriate values.

2. Using Git commands

You can use git clone to download the entire repository, or selectively checkout specific files/directories using git checkout.

# Clone the entire repo
git clone https://github.com/username/repo.git

# Checkout a specific file
git checkout branch -- path/to/file

# Checkout a specific directory
git checkout branch -- path/to/directory

Replace username, repo, branch, and path/to/file or path/to/directory with the appropriate values.

3. Using GitHub CLI

The GitHub CLI allows you to download repositories or specific files/directories directly from the command line.

# Download a repo
gh repo clone username/repo

# Download a file
gh repo view username/repo -- path/to/file > file

Replace username, repo, and path/to/file with the appropriate values.

Using these methods, you can download specific files or directories from GitHub repositories without cloning the entire repo, which can be useful for large repositories or when you only need a subset of the files.

How to Download GitHub Repository as zip

Here are the steps to download an entire GitHub repository as a ZIP file:

1. Navigate to the repository you want to download on GitHub.
2. Click on the green “Code” button towards the top-right of the repository.
3. In the dropdown menu that appears, select “Download ZIP”.
4. The repository will be downloaded as a ZIP file on your local machine.

Alternatively, you can directly construct the ZIP download URL by appending “/archive/master.zip” to the repository URL:

https://github.com/user/repo/archive/master.zip

Replace “user” with the GitHub username and “repo” with the repository name. This will download the master branch of the repository as a ZIP file.

You can also download a specific branch by replacing “master” with the branch name in the URL.

For example, to download the “develop” branch:
https://github.com/user/repo/archive/develop.zip

This method allows you to quickly download the entire repository’s source code as a ZIP archive without needing to clone the repository using Git.