Learn how to fork a project’s repository, clone it locally, make changes, and submit a pull request to contribute to a GitHub project you don’t have write access to.
Table of Contents
Question
Suppose you’d like to work with a project on GitHub, but you don’t have write access to the project. What can you do to contribute?
A. Fork the project’s repository to your GitHub account, clone the forked repository to your local machine, push changes to your repository, and submit a pull request to the target (upstream) repository.
B. Clone the project to your local machine and push updates directly to the project repository.
C. Use git commands to make a copy of the project so that you can work locally. Submit an issue to get your changes into the target repository.
Answer
A. Fork the project’s repository to your GitHub account, clone the forked repository to your local machine, push changes to your repository, and submit a pull request to the target (upstream) repository.
Explanation
GitHub provides forking functionality designed to allow you to work with projects where you aren’t an owner or don’t have write access. Forking makes a remote copy of the project in your repository that you can then clone locally. To submit updates to the target repository (upstream repository), you can submit a pull request.
If you want to contribute to a project on GitHub but don’t have write access, the correct approach is to:
- Fork the project’s repository to your own GitHub account. This creates a copy of the repository under your account that you have full control over.
- Clone the forked repository to your local machine using the `git clone` command. This downloads the project files to your computer.
- Create a new branch, make your changes, and commit them to your local repository.
- Push the changes to your forked repository on GitHub using `git push`.
- Open a pull request from your forked repository to the original (upstream) repository. This notifies the project maintainers of your proposed changes.
The project maintainers can then review your changes. If they approve, they will merge your pull request, incorporating your contributions into the main project repository.
This workflow allows anyone to propose changes to a GitHub project while maintaining the integrity of the original repository, since only approved changes from authorized maintainers are merged. It’s a foundational aspect of open source collaboration on GitHub.
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