I have a main repository and forked it. What will happen if I fork it again? Will it create another fork or just replace the previous one.
If I could create multiple forks, how to switch from one to another? Is it just like switching branches?
If I could do multiple fork, then is there any limit on the number of fork?
No, GitHub will only let you fork a single time. Once you have created a fork, the button to fork a repository will only link to your personal fork.
Or if you are part of organizations, you will get a target selector, prompting you for whom you want to create the fork; but for every account that already has a fork, you will also just get a link to that fork.
Of course, nothing prevents you from pushing a copy to a different/separate remote, but that will not maintain any relationship between the original repository and your “fork”. GitHub’s fork relationship only exists from the “Fork” button and can only ever exist for a single fork per account.
Related
There are two repositories: the original and the fork. The original is a few commits ahead of the fork. The fork is a few commits ahead of the original. On the fork I see this:
I want to update the fork ONLY. I do not want any changes from the fork going into the original. Normally I would use the Sync fork option, but it does not work in this case.
How can I update the fork without updating the original using the GitHub interface?
I tried creating a pull request, but this updates both the fork and the original.
I want to use react-native-screens, and found the repo at https://github.com/kmagiera/react-native-screens. What is the connection between kmagiera and react-native-screens? Does it just mean that kmagiera is the account that created and maintains react-native-screens? When I've seen someone fork a React Native component and say "I fixed this bug, check out my forked repo", the repo is of a similar format: https://github.com//. So, how do I know that https://github.com/kmagiera/react-native-screens is the repo I should pull from, since it could just be kmagiera's forked copy, and there could be multiple such copies?
Forked repos will have the text "forked from ***" under the title when you go to the main page. From that you can get the original repo. Sometimes people announce to use their own fork if the maintainers of the original haven't been maintaining and merging pull requests to the main repo.
I have forked osm0sis/boot-unlocker which is a fork of segv11/boot-unlocker because osm0sis's fork was ahead of segv11
I made few fixes and issued a pull request. The pull request was automatically sent to osm0sis (later I noticed there was an option to choose where to send the PR). Now I have been added as a contributor to osm0sis's fork but not in segv11's fork but I intended to contribute to original project (which is segv11/boot-unlocker). Should I continue sending PRs to osm0sis or send the future PRs to segv11? segv11's repo is behind osm0sis. What is the correct workflow? Issue PR to the most upto date fork or the original repo?
A more important thing is, which repo should I set my uptream as?
It all depends on what your goals are.
Typically you would send PRs to the original project and (hopefully) get those signed off and merged by its maintainers.
The main reason you would send PRs to a fork (osm0sis/boot-unlocker in this case) instead of the original project is if the fork will evolve and live as a separate project, never intending to merge with the original one and you want to contribute to that fork of the project because you agree with this other person's vision, etc...
upstream should be the project you intend to contribute to... Depending on what you decide based on the above.
Here is the GitHub Standard Fork & Pull Request Workflow:
https://gist.github.com/augustoproiete/256b560d008d39afc0814a19f41a1d49
You may also be interested in this answer.
I want to fork a github project to fix a couple of issues and then send a pull request.
The problem I'm running into is that I've already forked the project to adapt it for another user base.
Is it possible to create a second fork? If so, how?
When I try to fork now it just takes me to the previously created fork.
There is no way to have two forks of the same GitHub project unless you use two different GitHub accounts.
So:
Create a separate GitHub account (and verify the email)
Fork the
project
Invite your main GitHub account as a "Collaborator" (from
the settings)
You may need to add the extra step of creating an organization with the new GitHub account and inviting your main github account as an owner of the organization (also make sure your new fork is in that new organization). This will let you do things like deploy automatically to a Heroku app that is connected to your main GitHub account.
Why can't we just have multiple forks???
I mean that I could just commit and push without making a pull request, but I want to do it the offical way and I want somebody else to review the changes before I push to a public project.
GitHub pull requests do not need to be submitted from a fork; they work within a single repository as well:
Pull requests are especially useful in the fork & pull model because they provide a way to notify project maintainers about changes in your fork. However, they're also useful in the shared repository model where they're used to initiate code review and general discussion about a set of changes before being merged into a mainline branch.
There's nothing stopping you from creating a pull request even if you don't technically have to. This is often considered a best practice, and GitHub's own Flow model is largely based on pull requests.
Creating a pull request within a single repository is very similar to creating one from a fork:
Create a feature branch and push your work to that branch on GitHub
In the GitHub web UI, switch to your feature branch
Click the "Compare" & review button
The trick is not to use the master branch to create pull requests. Then you won't need to create multiple forks since you can make as many branches as you need and make pull requests against each branch independently.
Given a clean forked repo, create a dedicated branch and use that branch for the pull request.
You can create branches from the web UI (although it is not obvious).
Click the branch selection dropdown, type the new branch name in the input field, and then you'll see a clickable link Create branch: <new-branch-name> as shown below. The tricky UI part is that it might not be very obvious you should click the "create branch: xyz..." — it is NOT displayed as a button or as a hyperlink, and there is NO indication that this is a clickable link. Moreover, there is NO hint whatsoever that a branch can be created until you type in the search box — anyone would probably assume that the search box is used exclusively for searching branches, and not for creating them.
In case you already made changes directly in your fork's master branch then consider moving those changes into a dedicated branch and hard resetting the master branch to the original remote so that you keep it clean for synching with the upstream repo.
See also:
https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-pull-requests/proposing-changes-to-your-work-with-pull-requests/creating-and-deleting-branches-within-your-repository
The best way, recommended by github manual, is use command line git, mirror clone your repo and push it to your github.
https://docs.github.com/en/github/creating-cloning-and-archiving-repositories/duplicating-a-repository
If you strongly prefer GitHub web interface to the command line, a GUI friendly workaround is create a new organization and fork to that new organization.
Another GUI way I can think of is to declare a fork as a template repo using repo's setting so you can create as many forks as you need.
I've previously forked jockm/vert.x and sent him a pull request. Now I want to fork vert-x/vert.x (the upstream of jockm/vert.x) and send them a different pull request. But when I click the Fork button, unsuprisingly I end up in my tjcrowder/vert.x fork of jockm/vert.x instead. Is it possible to fork both vert-x/vert.x and jockm/vert.x simultaneously such that I can send each pull requests as appropriate?
I fear the answer may be the same as for this question about the converse situation ("there's no GitHub way, but you can add a remote repo") but I'm hoping otherwise — not least because I don't see how the answer there would allow me to send pull requests to the new remote.
There's no GitHub way (small lie, see below), but there's also nothing to fear.
By definition, your fork of a fork is a fork of the original.
When you open a pull request, you get the option to choose both the origin and the destination for your pull request. The choices available there obviously depend on the fork graph, but as long as there is a path in the graph between the 2 repositories, you should be safe.
Also, since pull requests live on the website side, you don't even need to add a remote as long as you don't want to use it from git.
Now of course, you might want to reconsider your place in that graph, and make yourself a direct child of the real upstream, but that's mostly unrelated.
As said earlier there is actually a twisted way to have multiple forks, which is to create organizations and fork in them. That way you can "own" multiple repositories in the same graph. But there's really no need to go there.
Thanks to sigma's answer, I saw that not only is the upstream repo available when I go to do a pull request on the jockm/vert.x repo, but all other forks of the upstream repo are as well. So what I ended up doing was:
Deleting my fork of jockm/vert.x and instead forking vert-x/vert.x, since mostly I want to work within the main upstream repo, not jockm's version.
Creating a branch for the commit I wanted to send to jockm, and a separate branch for the commit I wanted to send to vert-x.
Making the relevant changes to each branch.
Sending pull requests for each branch to the relevant repos, since the jockm/vert.x repo is listed as a possible target for the request (along with about 200 other forks).
I used separate branches (basically topic branches) so that those commits would remain the only thing in those pull requests, since subsequent commits on the same branch are automatically added to the pull request, and these changes needed to remain isolated until/unless merged.
It seems like the better option would be to create a branch on your fork, and create a pull request from that branch. You can use branches to "fork" your version
I didn't see any specifics on "multiple forks", so I would probably end up creating another GitHub account, under which I would do the second clone, and send the different pull request to vert.x/vert.x.
Since you can have "Multiple github accounts on the same computer" (with the right ssh config file, also described here), it is a possible workaround.
Note that, however, this is supported by GitLab, with GitLab 14.0 (June 2021):
Edit default path and project name when forking
Edit default path and project name when forking
Forking a project enables you to have an exact copy of an original repository where you can experiment, apply changes, and submit contributions to the parent project.
Your forks should have meaningful names that explain their goals, and if your project is diverging, you may need multiple forks of a single project.
In this release, GitLab now supports editing the project name and project slug directly when you create a fork.
You can now create multiple forks of the same project, each with a different name, all in the same group!
See Documentation and Issue.
You could also just create a new Organization under your profile/settings. Then you can fork different states of the same original repo through the same account.