I forked a repo on GitHub, made and pushed changes to my version, and now want to send a pull request to the original repo.
How can I send a pull request with changes affecting a single file and not include the commits and changes done on the other files?
You now (January 2015) can do it directly from the GitHub web interface.
See "Quick Pull Requests":
When using your browser to edit a file on GitHub.com, the web-based commit composer lets you quickly propose a change to a new branch and then immediately open a pull request for discussion and review:
Reducing the time it takes to open a pull request lowers the contribution barrier, and having this workflow available entirely within the browser makes collaboration more approachable for people with all technical skill levels.
Create a new branch from origin/master, commit the right changes to it (you can use git cherry-pick to copy commits among branches) and create a pull request of that branch.
Related
How do I go about making my pull requests have only the changes made on the new branch? Every time I push a branch it has all the changes from the previous branches included in the pull request also.
My manager is really big on making sure we do small PRs and have only the new changes on each one for easy review, but I'm at a complete loss as to how to do this. This is my first dev job and up until now I unfortunately haven't been able to do group work so managing PRs that might be a while before they are merged in is totally new to me.
So far I've only found how to cherry pick commits, is this the only way?
If I understand you right, you have a main branch (master?) that contains the latest version of your software and you have one or more other branches that contain modifications. You do some more modifications in that other branch and if you create a pull request it will contain all other changes.
The most simple solution I can think of is to use dedicated branches for all changes. Before starting to work, create a new branch from the main branch with the ticket ID, work description or whatever you use to describe your work: git branch -b feature-123.
Commit to this branch only and push it to the repo. If you now create a pull request from this feature branch to the main branch, it will only contain the changes you did and nothing else.
The further pull requests highly depend on your internal workflow and branch structure. But basically this workflow applies to all new changes.
This question pertains to my workflow using github. My colleague sent me a pull request and kept advancing the branch he was working in with new commits? I want to pull the commits related to the pull request, but the pull request now has the commits too. I searched for solutions and kept being led to the "rebase" command. Regrettably, that command is too complicated for me, plus I use tortoiseSVN as my interface to github. I had some solutions using revert, but they were all un-elegant and there had to be something easy. Also the last time I tried a revert, I had some conflicts with commits that no longer existed because of the revert.
My colleague got a response from a github "ask a human". I am reporting the solution here to help other users.
Navigate to the branch with the work to be pulled.
Navigate to the commit history for the branch and identify the point in that history that you want to pull into the master.
Click on the button on the right marked "<>" == "Browse the repository at this point in the history".
Click on the branch pull down menu and create a new branch. This will create a new branch at that point in the history that you want to pull into the master.
Create and execute a pull request to merge that branch into the master.
Too easy. I don't understand how I didn't run across an example of this workflow. I hope I save someone else the time and headaches that I spent.
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 may have screwed up, but there a way to get a code review going on GitHub after I did the below workflow?
I cloned a remote repository, branched the master and made my changes. I committed the changes, merged my branch into master, then ran a sync on GitHub and the changes are there now.
I'd now like to initiate a post-checkin review, but didn't fork the repository and so can't initiate a pull request, which as I understand it now is the common way to get reviews going in github. What should my next steps be?
Next time you should just push your changes from your branch to the remote repository, then submit a "pull request" for the branch back into master where the code can be reviewed prior to merging.
When you push changes to your branch, to compare your changes, go to that branch and look for this near the top in the code tab:
This is some good reading as well about how/when to use forking & pull requests: https://help.github.com/articles/using-pull-requests
EDIT:
And since you did say this is after the fact, the other thing you can do is go to the master branch->commits section, and click on the commit where you merged your branch in. That page allows you to make comments and view the changed files, so you can still review your code before you actually push it to your server. However, you should still do the other way next time.
To clarify...you can branch locally and then change, commit etc, and then push that branch to GitHub, then fire off a pull request?
Yes, and since August 14th 2018, you don't even need to switch to the Code tab:
When you push branches while using the “Pull requests” tab, GitHub will now display the dynamic “Compare and pull request” widget—so you can quickly create a pull request without having to switch back to the “Code” tab.
Learn more about pull requests in our documentation.
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.