Sync your fork with the original repo

What is a fork?

Creating a “fork” is producing a personal copy of someone else’s project. Forks act as a sort of bridge between the original repository and your personal copy.

Follow Following steps to sync a fork with the original repo

Configuring a remote for a fork:

• Open Terminal/cmd or git bash
• Change the current working directory to your local project
• List the current configured remote repository for your fork.

$ git remote -v
> origin  https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/YOUR_FORK.git (fetch)
> origin  https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/YOUR_FORK.git (push)

• Specify a new remote upstream repository that will be synced with the fork.

$ git remote add upstream https://github.com/ORIGINAL_OWNER/ORIGINAL_REPOSITORY.git

• Verify the new upstream repository you’ve specified for your fork.

$ git remote -v
> origin    https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/YOUR_FORK.git (fetch)
> origin    https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/YOUR_FORK.git (push)
> upstream  https://github.com/ORIGINAL_OWNER/ORIGINAL_REPOSITORY.git (fetch)
> upstream  https://github.com/ORIGINAL_OWNER/ORIGINAL_REPOSITORY.git (push)

Syncing a fork

• Fetch the branches and their respective commits from the upstream repository. This fetch will store in will be stored in a local branch upstream/master

$ git fetch upstream
> remote: Counting objects: 75, done.
> remote: Compressing objects: 100% (53/53), done.
> remote: Total 62 (delta 27), reused 44 (delta 9)
> Unpacking objects: 100% (62/62), done.
> From https://github.com/ORIGINAL_OWNER/ORIGINAL_REPOSITORY
>  * [new branch]      master     -> upstream/master

$ git fetch upstream
> remote: Counting objects: 75, done.
> remote: Compressing objects: 100% (53/53), done.
> remote: Total 62 (delta 27), reused 44 (delta 9)
> Unpacking objects: 100% (62/62), done.
> From https://github.com/ORIGINAL_OWNER/ORIGINAL_REPOSITORY
>  * [new branch]      master     -> upstream/master

• Check out your fork’s local “master” branch.

$ git checkout master
> Switched to branch 'master'

• Merge the changes from upstream/master into your local master branch. This brings your fork’s master branch into sync with the upstream repository, without losing your local changes.

git merge upstream/master
> Updating a422352..5fdff0f
> Fast-forward
>  README                    |    9 -------
>  README.md                 |    7 ++++++
>  2 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-)
>  delete mode 100644 README
>  create mode 100644 README.md

• If your local branch didn’t have any unique commits, Git will instead perform a “fast-forward”:

$ git merge upstream/master
> Updating 34e91da..16c56ad
> Fast-forward
>  README.md                 |    5 +++--
>  1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

Syncing your fork only updates your local copy of the repository. To update your fork on GitHub, you must push your changes.

Push your changes

Read more:  Subversion equivalent commands in git

References: https://help.github.com/

What is fork?

“fork” is producing a personal copy of someone else’s project. Forks act as a sort of bridge between the original repository and your personal copy.