(Contributor) Clone the Magento repository

Totally lost? Need a helping hand? Try our installation quick reference (tutorial) or installation roadmap (reference).

Intended audience

The audience for this topic is anyone who contributes to the Magento Open Source codebase. You should be highly technical, understand Composer and Git commands, and be able to upgrade the Magento system software and extensions using those commands. If that isn’t you, go back and choose another starting point.

If you clone the Magento 2 GitHub repository, you cannot use the Magento software in a production environment. You cannot have a live store that accepts orders and so on.

Prerequisites

Before you continue, make sure you’ve done all of the following:

Set up a server that meets our system requirements

For details, see Prerequisites
Created the Magento file system owner

Composer and Magento

We use Composer for dependency management. Composer enables us to manage the Magento components and their dependencies.

As an integrator, you want to manage each of your Magento core components and third-party components using the Component Manager and System Upgrade.

To do so, you start by creating a Composer project from our metapackage. The metapackage installs each component so it can be centrally managed after installation.

Composer provides you with the following advantages:

Enables you to reuse third-party libraries without bundling them with source code
Component-based architecture with robust dependency management
Manages dependencies to reduce extension conflicts and compatibility issues
Versioned dependencies
Semantic versioning
Supports the PHP Framework Interoperability standard

Install Composer

First, check if Composer is already installed:

In a command prompt, enter any of the following commands:

composer --help
composer list --help

If command help displays, Composer is already installed.

If an error displays, use the following steps to install Composer.

To install Composer:

Change to or create an empty directory on your Magento server.
Enter the following commands:
```
curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer
```
For additional installation options, see the Composer installation documentation.

Clone the Magento repository

This section discusses how to get current code by cloning the Magento GitHub’s develop branch. You can clone either a release branch or the develop branch:

Release branches like 2.1.0 are more stable

You must use a released branch with the Data Migration Tool.
Develop branches like 2.2-develop are more recent

Currently, the develop branch is the default but you can checkout a release branch like 2.1.0 after cloning.

Creating an authorization file

The Magento 2 GitHub repository requires you to authenticate. The composer install commands fails if you do not. To authenticate, generate authentication keys, after which you create an auth.json file in the home directory of the Magento file system owner.

Create `auth.json`

To create auth.json:

Log in to your Magento server as, or switch to, the Magento file system owner.
Edit or create auth.json in the user’s home directory.

The following example shows how to add repo.magento.com authentication to an existing file:
```
{
   "github-oauth": {
     "github.com": "<your github oauth id>"
   },
   "http-basic": {
      "repo.magento.com": {
         "username": "<public key>",
         "password": "<private key>"
      }
   }
}
```
For example, if your user name is magento_user, create or edit /home/magento_user/.composer/auth.json

How to clone the Magento 2 GitHub repository

You can clone the Magento 2 GitHub repository using either SSH or HTTPS protocols:

Use SSH for better security (no user name and password are exchanged). This requires you to share a public key with GitHub.
Use HTTPS if you don’t share an SSH key with GitHub (your user name and password are encrypted before being sent to GitHub).

See one of the following section:

Clone with SSH
Clone with HTTPS

Clone with SSH

To clone the Magento GitHub repository using the SSH protocol:

Copy to the clipboard the Magento GitHub repository SSH clone URL.

a. In a web browser, go to the Magento GitHub repository.

b. On the right side of the page, under the clone URL field, click SSH.

c. Click the Copy to clipboard button.

The following figure shows an example.
Change to your web server’s docroot directory. Typically, for Ubuntu, it’s /var/www or /var/www/html and for CentOS it’s /var/www/html.

Need help locating the docroot? Click here.
Enter git clone and paste the value you obtained from step 1.

An example follows:
```
git clone git@github.com:magento/magento2.git
```
Wait for the repository to clone on your server.
If the following error displays, make sure you shared your SSH key with GitHub:
```
Cloning into 'magento2'...
Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly
```
Optionally switch to a release tag as follows:
```
git checkout tags/<tag name> [-b <version>]
```
For example, to check out the 2.1.0 release tag in a new branch named 2.1.0, enter
```
git checkout tags/2.1.0 -b 2.1.0
```
Continue with Update installation dependencies.

Clone with HTTPS

To clone the Magento GitHub repository using the HTTPS protocol:

Copy to the clipboard the Magento GitHub repository HTTPS clone URL.

a. In a web browser, go to the Magento GitHub repository.

b. On the right side of the page, under the clone URL field, click HTTPS.

c. Click the Copy to clipboard button.

The following figure shows an example.
Change to your web server’s docroot directory.

Typically, for Ubuntu, it’s /var/www or /var/www/html and for CentOS it’s /var/www/html.
Enter git clone and paste the value you obtained from step 1.

An example follows
```
git clone https://github.com/magento/magento2.git
```
Wait for the repository to clone on your server.
Optionally switch to a release tag as follows:
```
git checkout tags/<tag name> [-b <version>]
```
For example, to check out the 2.1.0 release tag in a branch named 2.1.0, enter
```
git checkout tags/2.1.0 -b 2.1.0
```

Next step

After completing the tasks discussed on this page, see Update installation dependencies.

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