Whats the difference between Forking and Cloning a project?

I have a project working and I want to make some adjustments to it but I want to make those changes in an isolated project for testing. Kind of like a Production and Dev version of the app. So thats when I saw Clone and Fork but didn’t know the difference.

When working with GitHub, forking and cloning are two distinct processes that serve different purposes.

Forking a GitHub project involves creating a copy of the repository on the GitHub server, under your own account. Forking allows you to freely modify the contents of the repository without affecting the original project. The original repository is known as the upstream repository, and your forked copy is known as the downstream repository.

Cloning, on the other hand, is the process of creating a local copy of the repository on your own computer from a remote repository. By cloning the repository locally, you can make changes and commit them with version control.

In summary, forking creates a new GitHub repository that is a clone of an existing repository, while cloning creates a local copy of a remote repository on your own computer. While forking allows for collaboration on a project, cloning allows you to work on a project locally without affecting the original repository.

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