Keeping a fork up to date

notes.md

Keeping a fork up to date

Attending the "Getting Started with Open Source" talk at RC today, inspired me to finally figure out how to keep forks up-to-date.

Preamble

• Always make your changes in a branch
  • this way, you can,
    • keep the main branch of the fork in sync with upstream
    • ?

Steps

1. Add an upstream url if not already present
   • check current remote urls with git remote -v
   • if upstream entry not present, add with git remote add upstream repoUrl.git
     • for example, git remote add upstream https://github.com/octocat/Spoon-Knife.git
2. Get the current status? of upstream with git fetch upstream
3. Switch to main branch of local repository with git switch main or git checkout main
   • in some repositories, the main branch is called master
4. Merge changes from upstream with git merge upstream/main
   • this brings the main branch of your local repository up to date with the upstream
   • alternatively, git rebase upstream/main can be used. (Not sure which is better).
5. Push changes to your fork (origin) with git push
   • this brings the main branch of your origin repository up to date with the upstream

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Resources used (in addition to talk):

• https://docs.github.com/en/github/getting-started-with-github/fork-a-repo
• https://docs.github.com/en/github/collaborating-with-issues-and-pull-requests/syncing-a-fork
• https://www.jonathanmedd.net/2013/06/git-remote-add-upstream-fatal-remote-upstream-already-exists.html