How to Use Bitbucket with Github for Mac

I like BitBucket – all the cool kids use Github, but for small businesses BitBucket is great. Why? Because it has free private repositories for teams of 5 or smaller. And that’s me right there.

Currently I am using BitBucket for Brush Ninja, and I’ve recently started using it for Pro Theme Design. We use Git at Miniclip, and we also use a lot of the Atlassian suite. We actually host Git ourselves and don’t use BitBucket – but we do use Stash, Bamboo, Jira, and Confluence – so I’m quite well versed in their apps. As such I use SourceTree for my Git management. Much nicer than the command line – but also more complex than the Github Mac app.

Darren however isn’t used to SourceTree or BitBucket. He uses Github – and Github for Mac – but Github for Mac is designed around Github so using it for external repositories can be a little confusing. To help with this – I have written a short guide for adding an external repository to Github for Mac.

1. Login to BitBucket and go to the repository you want to use
2. Click the “Clone” button, and change the drop down option to HTTPS.
3. Copy the command that appears (something like: git clone https://[email protected]/team-name/repository-name.git)
4. Open terminal on your mac and navigate to wherever you want the theme files stored.
5. Paste the clone command in the terminal, press enter and then enter your password when requested.
6. In Github for Mac go to the repositories screen and click the + sign in the status bar.
7. Select Add Local Repository – and then select the repository you folder you want to add.
8. Done

Note that for this to work you will need to have Git installed on your dev machine. You can download Git from the official website.

I’ve only tried this with Github for Mac and BitBucket but I imagine the instructions will be basically the same for any 3rd party repository, and almost the same for the Windows version of the Github app.