You can contribute to an open source repository by submitting Pull Requests to the project maintainers. In order to do that, you need to set up the project first.

Initial setup

Fork the repository

A fork is a copy of a repository and allows you to contribute safely to project. You can create a fork by clicking the matching button in the repository.

Clone your fork

If you go back to your profile, you will see that a copy of repository was added to your personal repositories. Clone your copy of the repository locally.

git clone https://github.com/your_username/yourrepo.git

To see the current configuration of your remote repository type the following command:

git remote -v

Add the repo to your current configuration

git remote add upstream https://github.com/oss_username/theirrepo.git

If you list the current configuration again, you will see that the upstream repository has been added to your configuration.

origin is your forked remote repository. upstream is the original remote repository

Contributing

Create a branch and push it to your fork

Checkout master and create a branch.

git checkout -b yourbranchname

Make your changes, commit it locally and push it to your fork.

git add ...

git commit -m 'descirption of commit here'

git push --set-upstream origin yourbranchname

Create a pull request

Now you can create a pull request to have your changes merged. Go to your fork and click the button ‘new pull request’. You will see a screen similar to the one below.

Fill in the title and add a small description and press ‘create pull request’. And that’s it, you just made your first contribution to Forge!

Sync fork

Before you make a second contribution, you may need to sync your fork.

git fetch upstream

If you are not on your local master branch, checkout master

git checkout master

Merge the changes made to the upstream branch into your local branch and push it to your fork’s remote branch.

git merge upstream/master

git push origin master