How to know the source repository of a forked repository, in azure devops?

Question

I am working on a repository in my Azure DevOps project, which is forked from some other azure DevOps project. I would like to know source (the original repo from where the forking is done).

Let me know how I can get this information.

Answer 1

I am not aware that this is exposed in the UI, but there are at least two other ways you can get information about the upstream (parent) repository

Option 1: Use the Rest API

A GET request to https://dev.azure.com/{organization}}/{{project}}/_apis/git/repositories/{{forkname}}?includeParent=true&api-version=6.0 will have a field called parentRepository in the return message containing the details about the upstream repository

...
"parentRepository": {
        "id": "xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx",
        "name": "myrepo",
        "isFork": false,
        "url": "https://dev.azure.com/myorg/_apis/git/repositories/xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx",
        "remoteUrl": "https://[email protected]/myorg/myproject/_git/myproject",
        "sshUrl": "[email protected]:v3/myorg/myproject/myproject",
        "project": {
            "id": "yyyyyyy-yyyy-yyyy-yyyy-yyyyyyyyyyyy",
            "name": "myproject",
            "url": "https://dev.azure.com/myorg/_apis/projects/zzzzzzzz-zzzz-zzzz-zzzz-zzzzzzzzzzzz",
            "state": "unchanged",
            "visibility": "unchanged",
            "lastUpdateTime": "0001-01-01T00:00:00"
        },
        "collection": null
    }
...

Option 2: Clone the repo and check the server message

When you are cloning a forked Repo from Azure DevOps Repos the server sends the following message (visible with the standard git command line client)

Cloning into 'myfork'...
Password for 'https://[email protected]':
remote: Azure Repos
remote: This repository is a fork. Learn more at https://aka.ms/whatisafork.
remote: To add its upstream as a remote, run:
remote: git remote add upstream https://[email protected]/myorg/myproject/_git/myrepo
remote:
remote: Found 9 objects to send. (67 ms)
Unpacking objects: 100% (9/9), 1.78 KiB | 6.00 KiB/s, done.

From this message you can find the original repository by looking at the suggested upstream remote:

git remote add upstream https://[email protected]/myorg/myproject/_git/myrepo

In other words, the upstream repo of the fork is called myrepo and is located in myproject inside myorganization.