Boost Git Clone Speed in China: Use Gitee to Download at 1‑2 MB/s

Because of network connections, downloading from GitHub in China is usually limited to about 20 kB/s, which is acceptable for small projects but painfully slow for larger ones with many submodules.

This article proposes a new approach: use Gitee (码云) to mirror GitHub repositories, allowing download speeds of 1–2 MB/s.

1. Use Gitee’s repository mirroring

Requirements: a GitHub account and a Gitee (gitee.com) account.

Steps:

Fork the desired GitHub project to your own GitHub account (instant).

Log in to Gitee (register if needed), click the “Add Project” (+) button, choose “Migrate GitHub project”, link your GitHub account, select the project, and complete the migration (under three minutes).

Clone the repository from Gitee using the Gitee URL; the download speed is measured in MB/s.

Alternatively, you can create a new Gitee repository and set its remote URL directly.

Step 1: Create a new repository

Step 2: Example with GitHub repo https://github.com/PX4/Firmware.git

Step 3: …

Step 4: …

2. Speed up submodule downloads

Some projects use third‑party submodules that are not automatically fetched with git clone. After cloning the main project, run: git submodule update --init --recursive The submodule URLs still point to GitHub, so the same slow speed applies. Apply the mirroring method to each submodule: fork the submodule repository to your GitHub account, migrate it to Gitee, replace the submodule URL with the Gitee link, and then run the update command again.

After updating the URLs, the submodules download at the higher speed.

For detailed step‑by‑step instructions, search online.

References:

https://blog.csdn.net/kcx55/article/details/24400501
https://www.jianshu.com/p/c81e2bd377ad
https://blog.csdn.net/qq_22630169/article/details/74236535