A command-line tool for backing up private GitHub repositories from an organization to local storage or remote object storage.

Repo Backup CLI (rbk) provides functionality to:

• List all private, non-archived repositories in a GitHub organization
• Create local backups of repositories as archive files
• Create remote backups to object storage (Azure Blob Storage or S3-compatible storage)

The backup feature of this CLI leverages GitHub's Migration API to create a migration archive of all private non-archived repositories from a specified organization and then downloads or uploads this archive to your desired storage location.

The CLI supports two different storage backends for remote backups:

Azure Blob Storage is Microsoft's object storage solution for the cloud. To use Azure Blob Storage as your backend:

• Set STORAGE_BACKEND=azure in your configuration
• Configure the following environment variables:
  • AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME - Your Azure Storage account name
  • AZURE_STORAGE_API_KEY - Your Azure Storage API key
  • AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT_URL - Your Azure Storage account URL
  • AZURE_STORAGE_CONTAINER_NAME - Your Azure Storage container name

The CLI also supports S3-compatible object storage services (such as MinIO, AWS S3, DigitalOcean Spaces, etc.). To use S3-compatible storage:

• Set STORAGE_BACKEND=object in your configuration
• Configure the following environment variables:
  • OBJECT_STORAGE_ENDPOINT - The endpoint URL of your S3-compatible service
  • OBJECT_STORAGE_ACCESS_KEY - Your access key
  • OBJECT_STORAGE_SECRET_KEY - Your secret key
  • OBJECT_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME - The bucket name where backups will be stored
  • OBJECT_STORAGE_USE_SSL - Whether to use SSL (true/false, defaults to true)

This project requires several development dependencies which can be installed using Homebrew:

# Install all dependencies using the included Brewfile
brew bundle

You can use the included justfile to set up the environment:

just setup

The above command will create a .env file in the root directory from the .env.template file. You should replace the variables in it with the correct values.

• Go 1.25+ - The project requires Go version 1.25 or later
• Just - (Optional) Command runner for development tasks (installable via brew install just)

git clone https://github.com/kumojin/repo-backup-cli.git
cd repo-backup-cli

Install all development dependencies using the included Brewfile:

brew bundle

This will install Go, Just, and other required tools.

You can build the project using either Go directly or the included Justfile:

go build -o rbk .

just build

Both commands will create an executable binary named rbk in the current directory.

To install the binary globally so you can run rbk from anywhere:

go install .

This will install the binary to your $GOPATH/bin directory (make sure it's in your $PATH).

Test that the binary works correctly:

./rbk --help

Or if you installed globally:

rbk --help

rbk [command] [flags]

• -c, --config - Path to environment configuration file (default: ".env")
• -o, --organization - GitHub organization to use

The CLI uses an env file (.env by default) as its config:

• CLI_GITHUB_TOKEN - A GitHub personal access token with the necessary permissions
• SENTRY_DSN - (Optional) Your Sentry DSN in case you want to capture logs and errors
• STORAGE_BACKEND - The storage backend to use (azure or object)

For Azure Blob Storage (STORAGE_BACKEND=azure):

• AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME - Your Azure Storage account name
• AZURE_STORAGE_API_KEY - Your Azure Storage API key
• AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT_URL - Your Azure Storage account URL
• AZURE_STORAGE_CONTAINER_NAME - Your Azure Storage container name

For S3-Compatible Storage (STORAGE_BACKEND=object):

• OBJECT_STORAGE_ENDPOINT - The endpoint URL of your S3-compatible service
• OBJECT_STORAGE_ACCESS_KEY - Your access key
• OBJECT_STORAGE_SECRET_KEY - Your secret key
• OBJECT_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME - The bucket name where backups will be stored
• OBJECT_STORAGE_USE_SSL - Whether to use SSL (true/false)

You can also export the variables in your environment and the CLI will pick them up

List all private, non-archived repositories in the specified organization. Used primarily for debugging.

rbk repos

Create a backup of repositories from an organization:

rbk backup [local|remote]

Save the backup archive to local storage:

rbk backup local

This will save the archive as archive.tar.gz in the current directory.

Upload the backup archive to your configured object storage backend:

rbk backup remote

This will create a blob/object with the name format YYYY-MM-DD-org-migration.tar.gz and upload it to your configured storage container/bucket (Azure Blob Storage or S3-compatible storage).

# List all private repos in the organization
rbk repos --organization myorg

# Create a local backup of repositories
rbk backup local --organization myorg

# Create a remote backup to object storage
rbk backup remote --organization myorg --config custom.env

VS Code launch configurations are provided in the .vscode/launch.json file for debugging for all operations above.

This project includes a justfile with common development tasks. Use the following command to list them all:

just

The GitHub token must be a classic personal access token (not a fine-grained token) with the following permissions:

• repo - Full control of private repositories
• admin:org - Full control of orgs and teams, read and write org projects

To create a classic token follow these instructions.