I've found a repository on GitHub I would like to fork - but not the current version.
I want to fork the repo as it was quite a few commits back - is this possible? The repo has not marked any releases, so I'm not sure how to do this. I could obviously copy the code as it was in that commit, but I would prefer to fork, as then I get the link back to the original repo.
You can only fork the current repository.
You can reset the forked repository's master branch to an earlier commit though, making it look like as if you had forked it at that point.
See: How can I rollback a github repository to a specific commit?
If you reset every branch, it effectively resets your repository to an earlier state of the original repository (with exception of branch-independent data, like configuration, hooks etc which are not reset). Since it's possible that not all branches contain the commit from the master branch, you might need to look up commits by date for each branch, to reset them to the last commit before the commit from which you want to fork.
I was also unable to do this using github, but Sourcetree handled it perfectly.
Switched to the desired branch.
Found the commit that I wanted as the head of my new branch and right clicked.
Selected "branch."
My commit was already selected.
Name this new branch, create, and push.
Can also be done by selecting the "branch" button.
You then select the commit that you want as your new head, give it a name, and create it.
Related
Is there any way to replace merge with rebase at GitHub PRs? I looked through protected branches settings but didn't find such option.
GitHub now (Feb. 2022) supports this:
More ways to keep your pull request branch up-to-date
The Update branch button on the pull request page lets you update your pull request's branch with the latest changes from the base branch.
This is useful for verifying your changes are compatible with the current version of the base branch before you merge.
Update your pull request branch by rebasing:
When your pull request's branch is out of date with the base branch, you now have the option to update it by rebasing on the latest version of the base branch.
Rebasing applies the changes from your branch onto the latest version of the base branch, resulting in a branch with a linear history since no merge commit is created.
To update by rebasing, click the drop down menu next to the Update Branch button, click Update with rebase, and then click Rebase branch.
Previously, Update branch performed a traditional merge that always resulted in a merge commit in your pull request branch. This option is still available, but now you have the choice.
Note: Because rebasing rewrites the history of the branch, if you are working with the branch locally, you will need to fetch it and do a hard reset to ensure your local branch matches the branch on GitHub.com.
Learn more about keeping your pull request in sync with the base branch.
I doubt github supports this, as you should never rebase a public branch. From the official git docs:
Rebasing (or any other form of rewriting) a branch that others have based work on is a bad idea: anyone downstream of it is forced to manually fix their history. This section explains how to do the fix from the downstream’s point of view. The real fix, however, would be to avoid rebasing the upstream in the first place.
The easiest solution would be to simply use a merge. If you don't like that for any reason, you could create a new branch from main, apply the desired changes (e.g. by using git cherry-pick, or git diff in conjunction with patch), and then delete the old branch and create a new PR. If you really want to use rebase, you can do so locally and force-push the branch, but again, that's a really bad idea as it falsifies history and breaks the branch for everybody else.
I'd like to know how to proceed in GitHub where I could to be able to get the updates from the original repo but prevent opening a PR after each time I push a change made by myself?
The concept I want to apply this is to use a blog template for my GitHub pages. I'd like to get the feature for the future if the contributors would make any but at the same time, I'd like to prevent pushing anything to the original repo as a PR since those commits wouldn't include anything related to making a contribution to the project.
PRs aren't generated automatically, you need to explicitly create them from a branch.
You can fork a repo and work on it, and when needed, fetch and rebase from the original repo you forked from. As long as you don't explicitly use this repo to create PRs on the original repo, you should be fine.
EDIT - Adding some details as per the last comment:
Assume there's a repo called something owned by someone. You can start off by forking it to youruser using the GitHub UI. Then you can clone your fork and work on it:
git clone https://github.com/youruser/something.git
In order to get the recent changes from the original someone/something repo, you need to set it up as a remote. By convention you'd call this remote your "upstream", but you can really give it any name you choose:
git remote add upstream https://github.com/someone/something.git
Once you've added it as a remote, you can fetch from it and rebase on top of it:
git fetch upstream && git rebase upstream/main
(note that using the main branch is just an example. You can of course rebase on top of any branch in the remote repo)
I think it's not possible because when you clone or fork that repo, from that time, you start to add your own content to it since it's your personal blog. So you cannot keep getting the features from main repo. Maybe you can try rebase but I'm not sure if it works for this case. Or you can add those features to your repo by your own whenever you need them.
There is a certain commit I did to my Git repository which I host in GitHub. After that commit I've made several other commits, which were bad and redundant, in a second look. I thus need to revert to the certain commit / certain point in history before these bad changes.
I didn't find a button like "revert to this version" or "commit this version as the head of this branch (master)".
As you can see, I just want to make that older version the head of the master branch. How will you do that from GitHub?
Update
I emphasize: I ask on GitHub, not on git or any GUI other than GitHub.
If I understand you correctly you want a past commit as the last commit on the branch.
If so, using examples with origin and master:
Use git reset <comit_id> and then git push origin +master to push & delete all commits past the one you reset to. Notice the + sign before the branch name (master).
Note that this is irreversible (as far as I know) so take the necessary precautions.
I'm currently pulling in a repo at a previous commit with:
git+git://github.com/username/application-name.git#357y3530u325#egg=application-name
I want to modify some code at that commit, so I have forked the repo.
Is it possible to modify a Github repo's contents at a previous commit and then link to that modified commit in requirements.txt?
It would be good if I could do it all via the Github website, as opposed to cloning to local, modifying and pushing etc, if that is possible.
You can create a branch in your fork of the repository, make your changes and push them back into your branch on Github. Then change the repository specification (including commit number or branch name) to point to that.
I have a project, biocommons/hgvs. A contributor forked the project, made some changes, and submitted a pull request. I'd like to make some minor changes to those commits, and I'd prefer to do so in a feature branch.
Is there a way to pull the PR commits into a new branch?
You cannot pull them in another branch in a sense how mercurial uses branch (as in named branch created by hg branch).
However, you simply can continue to work on top of your latest commit and later merge your head and the head created by the pull request, thus both, yours and their head being anonymous branches. (IMHO this is the beauty - every head can work on its own, no need to expressly branch or name things)
If you still want a name, you can stick a bookmarks onto the head of the pulled changes; they work very similar to 'full' branches except that they can be changed and moved.
If you really need and want the changesets to be in a named branch, then pull from the forked repository, create the named feature branch manually and use rebase or histedit to move the commits to the just created feature branch.