Master GitHub Contributions: Fork, Clone, Commit, and Pull Request Step‑by‑Step

GitHub hosts countless open‑source projects, and developers can contribute code to them. This guide demonstrates the full contribution workflow using a sample repository githubTest owned by user Alvin.

1. Fork the repository

Harry clicks the “Fork” button on the project page, creating a personal copy of githubTest under his own GitHub account, including all files, history, and issues.

2. Clone to local machine

After forking, Harry clones the repository to his computer with git clone https://github.com/yychuyu/githubTest. The URL is shown in the article.

3. Create a development branch, edit, and commit

Harry creates a dev branch, makes his changes, and commits them locally. He avoids committing directly to master and later merges dev back into master.

4. Push changes to the fork

Using git push, Harry uploads the new commits to his fork on GitHub, where they appear in the repository’s commit history.

5. Open a pull request

Harry clicks “New pull request” on GitHub, reviews the diff, optionally adds a description, and creates the pull request. If GitHub reports “Able to merge”, the request can be merged by the original author.

Synchronising the fork after upstream changes

If Alvin updates the original repository, Harry must fetch, merge, and push the changes to keep his fork up‑to‑date.

1. Fetch

git fetch [email protected]:yychuyu/githubTest.git master:latest

This copies the upstream master branch into a local latest branch.

2. Merge

Harry checks out his master branch and merges latest into it.

3. Push

Finally, he pushes the updated master back to his fork.

Following these steps, Harry successfully contributes to the githubTest project and can continue making further contributions.