Update a Github Fork From the Original Repository

| posted in: nerdliness 


While it is easy to create forks of other projects through Github, it isn’t as easy to update your fork from the parent repository. The following steps are what I do to update my fork. These steps assume that you have a local copy of the repository and that everything is up to date and committed.

First you need to add a remote to the repository you forked.

$ git remote add --track <branchname> <projectname> git://github.com/<gitmember>/<project>.git

Where,

To see that the remote was successfully added you can run

$ git remote -v

which will show all the remotes your local repository currently has.

Next you want to fetch all the changes from the newly added remote.

$ git fetch <projectname>

Where projectname is the name you assigned to the remote above.

This fetch operation will create a new branch in your repository called projectname/branchname. With that in place you are ready to merge.

$ git merge projectname/branchname

That’s all there is to updating your fork from the parent repository.

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Mark H. Nichols

I am a husband, cellist, code prole, nerd, technologist, and all around good guy living and working in fly-over country. You should follow me on Mastodon.