Forks github desktop zip#

To prevent confusion, the a forked repo has a note under it to remind the user that the repo is forked from somewhere else.Īt this point, the forked repo will show up on the list of repos that Tomy can clone in GitHub Desktop. The fork will now show up as a repository in his own account. If he has has push access to multiple accounts, he may need to choose which account to put the fork in. Here’s what he sees:Īfter he clicks on the repository name, he clicks on the Fork button at the upper left of the repository summary page. Tomy visits my site and is excited about participating. I’ve started an open source collaborative project called the “Nashville Coding Cats” club and created a repo on my account called “code-cats-rock”. Let’s imagine a scenario involving me and my alter ego, Tomy the Cat. In the simplified example below, the online editor is used to directly edit a file on the main branch of the fork.īecause this process involves forking followed by pull requests, it’s known as the “fork and pull” model of collaboration. The request can be to pull the changes from a branch of the fork into the main branch of the organizational repo, although there are other possibilities depending on what’s conventional practice for the organization. From the GitHub website, you can then create pull requests asking the repository owners to consider pulling your recommended changes back into the original project. Typically you would create a working branch on the local copy of the repo, edit the documents, then push the changes to GitHub. You can then clone the forked repository to your desktop as you would any other repo. In this model, you fork the project repository to your own account using the GitHub website. This is a common situation for large open source projects, where there may be a large number of contributors, some of whom might not even be known to the repository owners. The other major reason for forking is as a means to contribute to a project for which you do not have write (i.e. The advantage of using the fork, then clone approach is that you can use the Git system to switch between branches in the forked repo and also potentially feed edits back to the original repo.

Forks github desktop zip#

A simpler alternative would be to simply download the foreign repo as a zip file, then open the file somewhere on your hard drive. In that case, you would fork the repo to your own account on the GitHub website, then use GitHub desktop to clone the repository to your local hard drive. One is to simply get a copy of the repo so that you can play with it. There are two major reasons why you might want to fork someone else’s repo. Your fork (fork is both a noun and verb) of the repository is completely independent of the source repository, and changes you make to the fork have no effect on the original repository unless you use a pull request to merge your changes back into it. When you fork a repository, you are making your own personal copy of a repository that is part of a different organization or person’s account. The last major concept in working with GitHub is forking a repository. Return to GitHub landing page Forking a Repo and the Open Source Model