Yes, you can use GitHub for Windows with BitBucket

​I'm a big fan of both GitHub and BitBucket as online version control applications.  I've been using git as a source control mechanism since 2010, and these online services since that time as well. Full Disclosure: I've been a paying customer of GitHub in the past, discontinuing when I was completed with the project I needed their full services for.  

I have always been very familiar with the command-line and using it to interact with the git source control seemed natural to me. To assist with those less comfortable with the command-line, a front-end for Windows-based developers was released by GitHub called "GitHub for Windows". In this application, the entire interaction with the source code repository is streamlined and made simple for the user.  The user-interface is configured to make storage of your content with GitHub a "no-brainer".  But it leads people to question:  "Can I use GitHub for Windows with BitBucket?"

Yes... yes you can.  In the rest of this article, I will show you how to configure this client app to interact with a BitBucket repository.​

From the main screen of GitHub for Windows, click “+ add”

In the resultant “new repository” window, key in whatever you’d like to name the repository and be sure to NOT mark the “Push to github” checkbox.  Click ‘Create’ at the bottom to create the local repository:

​New Repository Window

​Repository List

Next, in the repository list window, click the “right arrow” next to the name of the repository you just created to open that repository.​

Click the “tools” gear at the top of the repository details screen, and select the ‘settings…’ menu item.

Tools Menu

In the ‘primary remote (origin)’ textbox, enter the text of the SSH link for the repository on BitBucket.  You should see this on the right side of the screen on BitBucket:

​BitBucket SSH listing

You’ll need to enter the command-line to finish this…  from the repository details window, click "tools" and then "open a shell here". This should open either Git Bash or Windows PowerShell configured for git. Once that is open simply run:

git pull origin master

.. and you’re all synced up