Azure DevOps and repositories on GitHub: The keys to evolve your business

As with any migration process, migrating repositories from Azure DevOps to GitHub can present technical challenges, but also numerous benefits if done correctly.

We have prepared a guide to transition your repositories efficiently, CI/CD pipelines, and security configurations. Take note because it will be helpful in achieving a scalable and modular solution.

GitHub Copilot has rapidly evolved over the past few months exponentially from a programming assistant to an agent-enabled teammate.

Now your users can receive hands-on feedback on pull requests, fix bugs and implement new features, create pull requests, and respond to feedback, among many others.

Copilot’s capabilities are more powerful if your code resides on GitHub, so it’s critical to migrate our Azure DevOps repositories to GitHub so teams can take full advantage of Copilot’s potential.

Microsoft offers facilities for Azure DevOps customers to migrate their repositories to GitHub, which include:

• Tools, guidance, and support: With GitHub Enterprise Importer, we have in our hands a tool to migrate repositories, including full history, branches, and critical metadata.
• GitHub Enterprise Cloud with Data Residency: GitHub now has deployments of GitHub Enterprise Cloud with Data Residency in Europe, Australia, and the United States, with more to be added soon.
• Improved Azure Boards and Pipelines integrations with GitHub repositories: Integration enhancements have been introduced in Azure Boards, as well as scalability and reliability enhancements in Azure Pipelines.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/blog-end-to-end-demo-4.mp4?_=1

As mentioned above, with GitHub Enterprise Importer, you can migrate repositories to GitHub Enterprise Cloud.

Companies migrating from Azure DevOps (ADO) generally follow a multi-phase approach:

• Migrate repositories from ADO to GitHub.
• Migrate pipelines from Azure Pipelines to GitHub Actions.
• Migrate remaining assets, such as dashboards and artifacts, from ADO to GitHub.

To know at what point in time the migration needs to be completed, you need to determine the time scale, which will largely determine the approach. The first step in determining the time scale is to get an inventory of what you need to migrate.

• Number of repositories
• Number of change commit requests

For a migration from Azure DevOps, the inventory-report command in the ADO2GH extension of the GitHub CLI is recommended. The inventory-report command will connect to the Azure DevOps API and then create a very simple CSV file with some of the fields suggested above. To install the ADO2GH extension of the GitHub CLI and authenticate yourself.

Migration time is largely based on the number of requests to incorporate changes to a repository. If you want to migrate 1000 repositories, and each repository has 100 commit requests on average, and only 50 users have contributed to the repositories, the migration is likely to be very fast.

If, on the other hand, you want to migrate only a few repositories, but each has many commit requests and users, the migration will be slower and require much more planning and testing.

After taking inventory of the repositories you need to migrate, you can weigh the inventory data on the desired time scale. If the organization can support a higher degree of change, you may be able to migrate all repositories at once and complete the migration efforts in a few days. But you may have multiple machines that cannot be migrated at the same time. In this case, you may want to batch process and stagger the migrations to fit the time scales of the teams, which extends the migration effort.

GitHub Copilot’s new agent capabilities are transforming the software development lifecycle. To take full advantage of these new features, the best option is to migrate your repositories to GitHub, all while still using other Azure DevOps capabilities.

But not everything is so simple, because migrating repositories takes time, and the help of professionals may be your best option.

At Plain Concepts, we are official GitHub partners, which gives us recognition as experts in the field of repository migration. Therefore, we offer a wide selection of assessments and customized workshops to help you get the most out of GitHub and turn your teams into the best experts.

Also, don’t miss dotNET 2025, Europe’s largest event for .NET technology, collaboration tool,s and AI. The meeting will take place on June 19 at Kinépolis Ciudad de la Imagen in Madrid and will feature two talks about GitHub Copilot, so you can’t miss it. Get your ticket before they sell out!