Script I use to pull in pull requests from GitHub

pullrequest.rb

#!/usr/bin/ruby -wKU

if ARGV.empty?
  puts "Usage: pullrequest user:branch"
  exit 1
end

url = `git config --get remote.origin.url`
unless %r{([^/]+)\.git$} =~ url
  puts "Unable to determine repo from url (#{url})"
  exit 1
end

repo = $1
user, branch = ARGV.first.split(/:/)
system "git pull https://github.com/#{user}/#{repo}.git #{branch}"

A pull request from github comes with user name and remote branch in the form user:branch (e.g. randycoulman:default-thread-pool-size). Copy the user:branch into your paste buffer. Then in your local repot do:

$ git checkout -b my-branch   # use whatever temp branch name you wish, it doesn't matter
$ pullrequest user:branch     # paste user:branch from the github pull request

At this point, the pull request will be in your local branch. Check it out, run the tests and see if everything is ok. If you like the result, merge my-branch into master and push to github. If you don't like the changes, delete the branch and ask the pull requester to make improvements.